Yahweh spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,
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Yahweh spoke to Moses and to Aaron, saying,
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And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron, saying,
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And the LORD spoke unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying:
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Lev 13:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and…
Lev 13:1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron, saying,
Ver. 1. And the Lord spake.] {See Trapp on "Lev 7:22"}
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain I. Concerning the plague of leprosy we may observe…
I. Concerning the plague of leprosy we may observe in general, 1. That it was rather an uncleanness than a disease; or, at least, so the law considered it, and therefore employed not the physicians but the priests about it. Christ is said to cleanse lepers, not to cure them. We do not read of any that died of the leprosy, but it rather buried them alive, by rendering them unfit for conversation with any but such as were infected like themselves. Yet there is a tradition that Pharaoh, who sought to kill Moses, was the first that ever was struck with this disease, and that he died of it. It is said to have begun first in Egypt, whence it spread into Syria. It was very well known to Moses, when he put his own hand into his bosom and took it out leprous. 2. That it was a plague inflicted immediately by the hand of God, and came not from natural causes, as other diseases; and therefore must be managed according to a divine law. Miriam's leprosy, and Gehazi's, and king Uzziah's, were all the punishments of particular sins: and, if generally it was so, no marvel there was so much care taken to distinguish it from a common distemper, that none might be looked upon as lying under this extraordinary token of divine displeasure but those that really were so. 3. That it is a plague not now known in the world; what is commonly called the leprosy is of a quite different nature. This seems to have been reserved as a particular scourge for the sinners of those times and places. The Jews retained the idolatrous customs they had learnt in Egypt, and therefore God justly caused this with some others of the diseases of Egypt to follow them. Yet we read of Naaman the Syrian, who was a leper, Kg2 5:1. 4. That there were other breakings-out in the body which did very much resemble the leprosy, but were not it, which might make a man sore and loathsome and yet not ceremonially unclean. Justly are our bodies called vile bodies, which have in them the seeds of so many diseases, by which the lives of so many are made bitter to them. 5. That the judgment of it was referred to the priests. Lepers were looked upon as stigmatized by the justice of God, and therefore it was left to his servants the priests, who might be presumed to know his mark best, to pronounce who were lepers and who were not. All the Jews say, "Any priest, though disabled by a blemish to attend the sanctuary, might be a judge of the leprosy, provided the blemish were not in his eye. And he might" (they say) "take a common person to assist him in the search, but the priest only must pronounce the judgment." 6. That it was a figure of the moral pollution of men's minds by sin, which is the leprosy of the soul, defiling to the conscience, and from which Christ alone can cleanse us; for herein the power of his grace infinitely transcends that of the legal priesthood, that the priest could only convict the leper (for by the law is the knowledge of sin), but Christ can cure the leper, he can take away sin. Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean, which was more than the priests could do, Mat 8:2. Some think that the leprosy signified, not so much sin in general as a state of sin, by which men are separated from God (their spot not being the spot of God's children), and scandalous sin, for which men are to be shut out from the communion of the faithful. It is a work of great importance, but of great difficulty, to judge of our spiritual state: we have all cause to suspect ourselves, being conscious to ourselves of sores and spots, but whether clean or unclean is the question. A man might have a scab (Lev 13:6) and yet be clean: the best have their infirmities; but, as there were certain marks by which to know that it was a leprosy, so there are characters of such as are in the gall of bitterness, and the work of ministers is to declare the judgment of leprosy and to assist those that suspect themselves in the trial of their spiritual state, remitting or retaining sin. And hence the keys of the kingdom of heaven are said to be given to them, because they are to separate between the precious and the vile, and to judge who are fit as clean to partake of the holy things and who as unclean must be debarred from them.
II. Several rules are here laid down by which the judgment of the priest must be governed. 1. If the sore was but skin-deep, it was to be hoped it was not the leprosy, Lev 13:4. But, if it was deeper than the skin, the man must be pronounced unclean, Lev 13:3. The infirmities that consist with grace do not sink deep into the soul, but the mind still serves the law of God, and the inward man delights in it, Rom 7:22, Rom 7:25. But if the matter be really worse than it shows, and the inwards be infected, the case is dangerous. 2. If the sore be at a stay, and do not spread, it is no leprosy, Lev 13:4, Lev 13:5. But if it spread much abroad, and continue to do so after several inspections, the case is bad, Lev 13:7, Lev 13:8. If men do not grow worse, but a stop be put to the course of their sins and their corruptions be checked, it is to be hoped they will grow better; but if sin get ground, and they become worse every day, they are going downhill. 3. If there was proud raw flesh in the rising, the priest needed not to wait any longer, it was certainly a leprosy, Lev 13:10, Lev 13:11. Nor is there any surer indication of the badness of a man's spiritual state than the heart's rising in self-conceit, confidence in the flesh, and resistance of the reproofs of the word and strivings of the Spirit. 4. If the eruption, whatever it was, covered all the skin from head to foot, it was no leprosy (Lev 13:12, Lev 13:13); for it was an evidence that the vitals were sound and strong, and nature hereby helped itself, throwing out what was burdensome and pernicious. There is hope in the small-pox when they come out well: so if men freely confess their sins, and hide them not, there is no danger comparable to theirs that cover their sins. Some gather this from it, that there is more hope of the profane than of hypocrites. The publicans and harlots went into the kingdom of heaven before scribes and Pharisees. In one respect, the sudden breakings-out of passion, though bad enough, are not so dangerous as malice concealed. Others gather this, that, if we judge ourselves, we shall not be judged; if we see and own that there is no health in us, no soundness in our flesh, by reason of sin, we shall find grace in the eyes of the Lord. 5. The priest must take time in making his judgment, and not give it rashly. If the matter looked suspicious, he must shut up the patient seven days, and then seven days more, that his judgment might be according to truth. This teaches all, both ministers and people, not to be hasty in their censures, nor to judge any thing before the time. If some men's sins go before unto judgment, the sins of others follow after, and so men's good works; therefore let nothing be done suddenly, Ti1 5:22, Ti1 5:24, Ti1 5:25. 6. If the person suspected was found to be clean, yet he must wash his clothes (Lev 13:6), because he had been under the suspicion, and there had been in him that which gave ground for the suspicion. Even the prisoner that is acquitted must go down on his knees. We have need to be washed in the blood of Christ from our spots, though they be not leprosy-spots; for who can say, I am pure from sin? though there are those who through grace are innocent from the great transgression.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron,....…
And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron,.... Aaron is addressed again, though left out in the preceding law, because the laws concerning leprosy chiefly concerned the priests, whose business it was to judge of it, and cleanse from it; and so Ben Gersom observes, mention is made of Aaron here, because to him and his sons belonged the affair of leprosies, to pronounce unclean or clean, to shut up or set free, and, as Aben Ezra says, according to his determination were all the plagues or strokes of a man, who should be declared clean or unclean:
saying; as follows.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Rules whereby the priest was to judge of the…
Rules whereby the priest was to judge of the leprosy, ver. 1- 44. Directions concerning the leper, ver. 45, 46. Concerning the leprosy in garments, ver. 47-59.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Laws relative to the leprosy. It is to be…
CHAPTER XIII
Laws relative to the leprosy. It is to be known by a rising in
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the flesh, a scab, or a bright spot, 1, 2.
When the priest sees these signs he shall pronounce the man
unclean, infected with the leprosy, and unfit for society, 3.
Dubious or equivocal signs of this disorder, and how the person
is to be treated in whom they appear, 4-8.
In what state of this disorder the priest may pronounce a man
clean or unclean, 9-13.
Of the raw flesh, the sign of the unclean leprosy, 14, 15.
Of the white flesh, the sign of the leprosy called clean, 16, 17.
Of the leprosy which succeeds a boil, 18-20.
Equivocal marks relative to this kind of leprosy, 21, 22.
Of the burning boil, 23.
Of the leprosy arising out of the burning boil, 24, 25.
Equivocal marks relative to this kind of leprosy, 26-28.
Of the plague on the head or in the beard, 29.
Of the scall, and how it is to be treated, 30-37.
Of the plague of the bright white spots, 38, 39.
Of the bald head, 40, 41.
Of the white reddish sore in the bald head, 42-44.
The leper shall rend his clothes, put a patch on his upper lip,
and cry unclean, 45.
He shall be obliged to avoid society, and live by himself
without the camp, 46.
Of the garments infected by the leprosy, and the signs of this
infection, 47-52.
Equivocal marks relative to this infection, and how the garment
is to be treated, by washing or by burning, 53-58.
Conclusion relative to the foregoing particulars, 59.
NOTES ON CHAP. XIII
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Lev 13:1. This law is directed to Aaron as…
Lev 13:1. This law is directed to Aaron as well as Moses, because he and his sons were to be judges, to determine, according to certain rules, what was clean and what unclean.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain 1And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, saying,…
A.—EXAMINATION AND ITS RESULT
Lev_13:1-46
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1And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, saying, 2When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a scab, or bright spot, and it be in the skin of the flesh like the plague [a spot1] of leprosy; then he shall be brought unto Aaron the priest, or unto one of his sons the priests: 3and the priest shall look on the plague [spot1] in the skin of the flesh: and when the hair in the plague [spot1] is turned2 white, and the plague [spot1] in sight be deeper than the skin3 of his flesh, it is a plague [spot1] of leprosy: and the priest shall look on him, and pronounce him unclean. 4If the bright spot be white in the skin of his flesh, and in sight be not deeper than the skin, and the hair thereof be not turned3 white; then the priest shall shut up him that hath the plague [shall bind up the spot4] seven days: 5and the priest shall look on him the seventh day: and, behold, if the plague [spot1] in his sight be at a stay, and the plague [spot1] spread not in the skin; then the priest shall shut him up [shall bind it up4] seven days more: 6and the priest shall look on him again the seventh day: and, behold, if the plague be somewhat dark [spot1be somewhat faint5], and6 the plague [spot1] spread not in the skin, the priest shall pronounce him clean: it is but a scab: and he shall wash his clothes, and be clean. 7But if the scab spread much abroad in the skin, after that he hath been 8seen of the priest for his cleansing, he shall be seen of the priest again: and if the priest see that, behold, the scab spreadeth in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is a leprosy.
9When7 the plague [spot1] of leprosy is in a man, then he shall be brought unto the priest; 10and the priest shall see him: and, behold, if the rising be white in the skin, and it have turned8 the hair white, and there be quick [a mark of9] raw flesh 11in the rising; it is an old leprosy in the skin of his flesh, and the priest shall pronounce him unclean, and shall not shut him up [bind it up4]: for he is unclean.
12And if a leprosy break out abroad in the skin, and the leprosy cover all the skin of him that hath the plague [spot1] from his head even to his foot, wheresoever the priest looketh; 13then the priest shall consider: and, behold, if the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague [pronouncethe spot1clean4]: it [Hebrews 10] is all turned white: he is clean. 14But when raw flesh appeareth in him, he shall be unclean. 15And the priest shall see the raw flesh, and pronounce him to be unclean: for the raw flesh is unclean: it is a leprosy. 16Or if the raw flesh turn [change11] again, and be changed [be turned10] unto white, he shall come unto the priest; 17and the priest shall see him: and, behold, if the plague [spot12] be turned into [unto13] white; then the priest shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague [pronounce the spot1clean4]: he is clean.
18The flesh also, in which,14 even in the skin thereof, was a boil,15 and is healed, 19and in the place of the boil14 there be a white rising, or a bright spot, white, and somewhat reddish [and glistening16], and it be shewed to the priest; 20and if, when the priest seeth it, behold, it be in sight lower than the skin, and the hair thereof be turned white; the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is a plague [spot1] of leprosy broken out of the boil.14 21But if the priest look on it, and, behold, there be no white hairs therein, and if it be not lower than the skin, but be somewhat dark 22[faint5]; then the priest shall shut him up [shall bind it up4] seven days: and if it spread much abroad in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is a plague [spot1]. 23But if the bright spot stay in his place, and spread not, it is a burning boil [a scar of the boil17]; and the priest shall pronounce him clean.
24Or if there be any flesh, in the skin whereof there is a hot burning [a burn by fire18], and the quick flesh that burneth [the mark of the burn8] have a white bright spot, somewhat reddish [glistening13], or white: 25then the priest shall look upon it: and, behold, if the hair in the bright spot be turned white, and it be in sight deeper than the skin; it is a leprosy broken out of the burning: wherefore the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is the plague [spot1] of leprosy. 26But if the priest look on it, and, behold, there be no white hair in the bright spot, and it be no lower than the other [omit other] skin, but be somewhat dark [faint5]; then the priest shall shut him up [shall bind it up4] seven days: 27and the priest shall look upon him the seventh day; and if it be spread much abroad in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is the plague [spot1] of leprosy. 28And if the bright spot stay in his place, and spread not in the skin, but it be somewhat dark [faint5]: it is a rising of the burning, and the priest shall pronounce him clean: for it is an inflammation [a scar15] of the burning.
29If a man or woman have a plague [spot1] upon the head or the beard; then the priest shall see the plague [spot1]: and, behold, if it be in sight deeper than the skin; and there be in it a [omit a] yellow thin hair; 30then the priest shall pronounce him unclean: it is a dry scall, even a leprosy upon the head or beard. 31And if the priest look on the plague [spot1] of the scall, and, behold, it be not in sight deeper than the skin, and that there is no black19 hair in it; then the priest shall shut up him that hath the plague of the scall [shall bind up4the spot1of the scall] seven days: 32and in the seventh day the priest shall look on the plague20 [spot]: and, behold, if the scall spread not, and there be in it no yellow hair, and the scall be not in sight deeper than the skin; 33he shall be shaven, but the scall shall he not shave; and the priest shall shut up him that hath the scall [shall bind up the scall4] seven days more: 34and in the seventh day the priest shall look on the scall: and, behold, if the scall be not spread in the skin, nor be in sight deeper than the skin; then the priest shall pronounce him clean: and he shall wash his clothes, and be clean. 35But if the scall spread much in the skin after his cleansing; 36then the priest shall look on him: and, behold, if the scall be spread in the skin, the priest shall not seek for yellow hair; he is unclean. 37But if the scall be in his sight at a stay and that there is black hair grown up therein; the scall is healed, he is clean: and the priest shall pronounce him clean.
38If a man also or a woman have in the skin of their flesh bright spots, even white bright spots; 39then the priest shall look: and, behold, if the bright spots in the skin of their flesh be darkish [faint5] white; it is a freckled spot21 that groweth in the skin; he is clean.
40And the man whose hair is fallen off his head, he is bald;22 yet is he clean. 41And he that hath his hair fallen off from the part of his head toward his face, he is forehead bald: yet is he clean. 42And if there be in the bald head, or bald forehead, a white reddish sore [glistening13spot1]; it is a leprosy sprung up in his bald head, or his bald forehead. 43Then the priest shall look upon it: and, behold, if the rising of the sore [spot1] be white reddish [glistening13] in his bald head, or in his bald forehead, as the leprosy appeareth in the skin of the flesh; 44he is a leprous man, he is unclean: the priest shall pronounce him utterly unclean; his plague [spot1] is in his head.
45And the leper in whom the plague [spot1] is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare,23 and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip [his mouth24], and shall cry, Unclean, unclean. 46All the days wherein the plague [spot1] shall be in him he shall be defiled: he is unclean: he shall dwell alone [apart25]; without the camp shall his habitation be.
B.—LEPROSY IN CLOTHING AND LEATHER
Lev_13:47-59
47The garment also that the plague [spot1] of leprosy is in, whether it be a woollen 48garment, or a linen garment; whether it be in the warp, or woof; of linen, or of woollen; whether in a skin, or in anything made of skin; 49and if the plague [spot1] be greenish or reddish [very green or very red26] in the garment, or in the skin, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in anything of skin; it is a plague [spot1] of leprosy, and shall be shewed unto the priest: 50and the priest shall look upon the plague, and shut up it that hath the plague [spot,1and bind up4the spot1] seven days: 51and he shall look on the plague [spot1] on the seventh day: if the plague [spot1] be spread in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in a skin, or in any work that is made of skin; the plague [spot1] is a fretting leprosy; it is unclean. 52He shall therefore burn that garment, whether warp or woof, in woollen or in linen, or anything of skin, wherein the plague [spot1] is: for it is a fretting leprosy; it shall be burnt in the fire. 53And if the priest shall look, and, behold, the plague [spot1] be not spread in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in anything of skin; 54then the priest shall command that they wash the thing wherein the plague [spot1] is, and he shall shut [bind4] it up seven days more: 55and the priest shall look on the plague [spot1], after that it is washed: and, behold, if the plague [spot1] have not changed his color, and the plague [spot1] be not spread; it is unclean; thou shalt burn it in the fire; it is fret inward, whether it be bare within or without.27 56And if the priest look, and, behold, the plague be somewhat dark [the spot1be somewhat faint5] after the washing of it; then he shall rend it out of the garment, or out of the skin, or out of the warp, or out of the woof: 57and if it appear still in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in anything of skin; it is a spreading plague [omit a and plague;] thou shalt burn that wherein the plague [spot1] is, with fire. 58And the garment, either warp, or woof, or whatsoever thing of skin it be, which thou shalt wash, if the plague [spot1] be departed from them, then it shall be washed the second time, and shall be clean.
59This is the law of the plague [spot1] of leprosy in a garment of woollen or linen, either in the warp, or woof, or anything of skins, to pronounce it clean, or to pronounce it unclean.
Footnotes:
[1]Lev_13:2. נֶגַע, a word of very frequent occurrence in these two chapters where it is uniformly translated in the A. V. (except Lev_13:42-43, sore) plague, as it is also in Gen_12:17; Exo_11:1; Deu_24:8 (in reference also to leprosy); 1Ki_8:37-38; Psa_91:10. Elsewhere the renderings of the A. V. are very various: sore, stroke, stripe, wound. By far the most common rendering in the LXX. is ἁφή=tactus, ictus. The idea of the word is a stroke or blow, and then the effect of this in a wound or spot. Clark therefore would translate here stroke, which meets well enough the meaning of the word itself, but does not in all cases convey the sense in English. It is perhaps impossible to find one word in English which can be used in all cases; but that which seems best adapted to Leviticus is the one given by Horsley and Lee, and adopted here: spot. So Keil, Wilson and others. There is no article in the Heb.
[2]Lev_13:4. The construction in Lev_13:3-4; Lev_13:10 is without a preposition; in Lev_13:16-17 it is with the preposition לְ, as is expressed in the A. V.
[3]Lev_13:3. The sense is here undoubtedly the scarf skin (Clark), the cuticle, in contradistinction to the cutis, the true skin below. So Wilson, who says: “This distinction in reality constitutes one of the most important points of diagnosis between real leprosy and affections of the skin otherwise resembling leprosy.” But as we have in Heb. only the one word עוֹר for both (except the ἁπ. λέγ. גֶּלֶד, Job_16:15), there does not seem to be warrant for changing the translation, especially as in English skin answers to either with the same indefiniteness.
[4]Lev_13:4-5, etc. According to Rosenmüller and Gesenius, נֶגַע is used by metonymy for the person upon whom it is. This view is adopted by Lange. It appears in the Targ. of Onk. and in the Vulg., and has been followed by the A. V. Far better is the rendering of the Sam., LXX. and Syr.: the priest shall bind up the spot, or sore. This is the exact translation of the Heb., and is advocated by Horsley, Boothroyd, and many others. Fuerst does not recognize the sense by metonymy. The same change should perhaps also be made in ver.12. See Exegesis. In the case of shutting up the leprous house (Lev_14:38) the word house is distinctly expressed in the Heb.
[5]Lev_13:6. כֵּהָה=dim, pale, faint, weak, dying. The idea is that of something in the process of fading away, disappearing. LXX. ἀμαυρὰ, Vulg. obscurior.
[6]Lev_13:6. It does not appear why the conjunction in the A. V. should be printed in italics; it is, however wanting in 18 MSS., the Sam., and LXX.
[7]Lev_13:9. The conjunction is wanting in the Heb., but is supplied in the Sam. and versions.
[8]Lev_13:4. The construction in Lev_13:3-4; Lev_13:10 is without a preposition; in Lev_13:16-17 it is with the preposition לְ, as is expressed in the A. V.
[9]Lev_13:10; Lev_13:24. מִחְיָה, according to Rosenmueller and Fuerst an indication, and this is the sense given in Targ., Onk. and the Syr., and apparently also in the Vulg. The LXX. renders ἀπὸ τοῦ ὑγιοῦς τῆς σαρκὸς τῆς ζώσης ἐν τῇ οὐλῇ, taking the מ as preposition, and understanding it, as the Rabbins, of a spot of proud flesh in the midst of the cicatrice. The margin of the A. V. is the quickening of living flesh; scar would express the sense, but this is appropriated to צָרֶבֶת, Lev_13:23; Lev_13:28, and mark gives the exact rendering of the Hebrew, and meets the requirements of the context.
[10]Lev_13:13. The pronoun should obviously refer to the man rather than the spot.
[11]Lev_13:16. נֶהפַּךְ. This being the same verb as is used in Lev_13:3-4; Lev_13:17, in the same sense, the rendering should certainly be the same. The alteration in the A. V. was evidently on account of the previous translation of יָשׁוּב by turn. It is better to put the new word there.
[12]Lev_13:2. נֶגַע, a word of very frequent occurrence in these two chapters where it is uniformly translated in the A. V. (except Lev_13:42-43, sore) plague, as it is also in Gen_12:17; Exo_11:1; Deu_24:8 (in reference also to leprosy); 1Ki_8:37-38; Psa_91:10. Elsewhere the renderings of the A. V. are very various: sore, stroke, stripe, wound. By far the most common rendering in the LXX. is ἁφή=tactus, ictus. The idea of the word is a stroke or blow, and then the effect of this in a wound or spot. Clark therefore would translate here stroke, which meets well enough the meaning of the word itself, but does not in all cases convey the sense in English. It is perhaps impossible to find one word in English which can be used in all cases; but that which seems best adapted to Leviticus is the one given by Horsley and Lee, and adopted here: spot. So Keil, Wilson and others. There is no article in the Heb.
[13]Lev_13:17. The preposition is the same as in the previous verse, and the change in the A. V. may have been simply accidental.
[14]Lev_13:18. The word בּוֹ seems redundant, and is wanting in 4 MSS. and the Sam.
[15]Lev_13:18 (bis), 20, 23. שֶׁחִין, burning ulcer, would perhaps be a better, because a more general word; but boil was probably understood with sufficient latitude.
[16]Lev_13:19. אֲדַמְדָּמֶת. The reduplication of the letters in Heb. always intensifies the meaning (see Bochart, Hieroz. Pt. II., lib. V., c. vi., Ed. Rosen. III., p. 612 ss.); if therefore this be translated red at all, it must be very red, which would be inconsistent with the previous white. This obvious inconsistency has led the ancient versions into translations represented by the somewhat reddish of the A. V., and frequently to rendering the previous conjunction or. But as there is no conjunction at all in the Heb., it seems better to follow the suggestion of Pool, Patrick and others, and understand the word as meaning very bright, shining, glistening. Comp the description of leprosy, Exo_4:6; Num_12:10; 2Ki_5:27.
[17]Lev_13:23; Lev_13:28. צ׳ הַמִּכְוָה ,צָרֶבֶת הַשְּׁחִין, Rosenmueller, cicatrix ulceris. So all the ancient versions, and so Gesenius. So also Coverdale and Cranmer, and so Riggs. Fuerst, however, inflammation.
[18]Lev_13:24. The margin of the A. V. is better than the text. This paragraph (Lev_13:24-28) is plainly in relation to leprosy developing from a burn on the skin. So Gesen, Fuerst, Pool, Patrick, etc. So the LXX. and Vulg.
[19]Lev_13:31. The meaning of שָׁחֹר =black is established. The LXX., yellow, can therefore only be considered as an emendation of the text, substituting צָהֹב, and this is followed by Luther, Knobel, Keil, Murphy and others; it is, however, sustained by no other ancient version nor by any MS., and the change in the LXX. must be considered as simply an effort to avoid a difficulty. Keil and Clark propose, as a less desirable alternative, the omission of the negative particle. There is, however, no real difficulty in the text as it stands. See Exegesis.
[20]Lev_13:32. The Sam. here substitutes נֶתֶק, scall, for נֶגַע, spot.
[21]Lev_13:39. בֹּהַק, a word ἁπ. λέγ. according to Gesen. a harmless eruption of a whitish color which appears on the dark skin of the Arabs, and is still called by the same name.
[22]Lev_13:40. קֵרֵחַ, used here apparently for the back of the head in contradistinction to גִּבֵּחַ the fron4, which occurs only here (but its derivative, גַּבַּחַת, is found Lev_13:42 bis, 43 and 55). קֵרֵחַ, however, is elsewhere baldness in general. Comp. Deu_14:1.
[23]Lev_13:45. Comp. Textual Note5 on Lev_10:6.
[24]Lev_13:45. שָׂפָם. There is some doubt as to the true meaning. It is translated beard in the A. V., 2Sa_19:24 (25), and so Fuerst and Gesenius would render it here, guided by the etymology. All the ancient versions, however, translate it either mouth or lips, and a word etymologically signifying beard (or rather the sprouting place of hair) would easily come to have this sense in use. It is a different word from the זָקָן=beard of Lev_13:29.
[25]Lev_13:46. בָּדָד. The alone of the A. V. would ordinarily be a good enough translation, but is liable to be misunderstood. The leper was simply to dwell apart from the clean Israelites, but might and did live with other lepers.
[26]Lev_13:49. יְרַקְרַק. The reduplication of the letters intensifies the meaning. Comp. note13 on Lev_13:19. אֲדַמְדָּמֶת, too, as noted above, may here mean either very red, or, as before, glistening. There is so little knowledge about the fact that neither of them can be certainly decided upon; but as in this case we have the disjunctive (as also in Lev_14:37), it seems more probable that two distinct colors were intended.
[27]Lev_13:55. The margin of the A. V. gives the literal rendering of the Heb. bald in the head thereof, or in the forehead thereof, and there can be no doubt that these are terms figuratively applied to the cloth or skin for the right and wrong side, as in the text.
THIRD SECTION
Laws Concerning Leprosy
Chaps. 13, 14
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PRELIMINARY NOTE
The disease of leprosy has happily become so rare in modern times in the better known parts of the world that much obscurity rests upon its pathology. The attempt will only be made here to point out those matters which may be considered as fixed by common consent, but which will be found sufficient for the illustration of the more important points in the following chapters.
In the first place, then, it appears indisputable that leprosy is a broad name covering several varieties of disease more or less related to one another. These are separable into two main classes, one covering the different, forms of Elephantiasis (tuberculated and anæsthetic); the other, the Lepra vulgaris. Psoriasis, Syphilis, etc. It is the former class alone with which Leviticus has to do as a disease. At the present time the tuberculated variety is said to be the more common in those countries in which leprosy still exists to any considerable extent, while the anæsthetic was probably more prevalent in the time of Moses. The latter is described by Celsus under the name of λεύκη, and Keil maintains that the laws of Moses in regard to leprosy in man relate exclusively to this. Clark, however, has shown “that the two in a great number of cases work together, and as it did in the days of Moses, the disease appears occasionally in an ambiguous form.” Wilson has recorded a number of cases in detail, showing the interchange of the two forms in the same patient. The symptoms of the disease intended by Moses sufficiently appear in the text itself, and if these symptoms cover what would now appear in medical nomenclature as different diseases, then all those diseases, classified under the general name of leprosy were intended to be included in the Levitical legislation.
Nothing whatever is said in the law either of the origin, the contagiousness, or the cure of the disease. In modern experience it seems to have been sufficiently proved that it is hereditary, but only to the extent of three or four generations, when it gradually disappears; neither is it in all cases hereditary, the children of lepers being sometimes entirely unaffected by leprosy, and on the other hand the disease often appearing without any hereditary taint. In its first appearance it is now often marked only by some slight “spot” upon the skin, giving no pain or other inconvenience, but obstinately resisting all efforts at removal, and slowly but irresistibly spreading. Sometimes months, sometimes years, even to the extent of twenty or thirty years, intervene between the first appearance of the “spots” and their development. It is not improbable that in the course of many centuries a considerable modification in the rapidity of its progress may have taken place in a disease which is found gradually to die out by hereditary transmission. The question of its contagiousness is still much mooted among the medical faculty. The better opinion seems to be that it is not immediately contagious, but is propagated by prolonged and intimate intercourse in the case of susceptible persons. At least it is certain that in all known instances of the prevalence of the disease one of the most important of the means of control has been the segregation of the lepers, and where this precaution has been neglected, the disease has continued to prevail. After the leprosy has once acquired a certain degree of development, there is no known means of cure. Everything hitherto attempted has been found to rather aggravate than mitigate the disorder. It is asserted that it yields to medical treatment in its earliest stages when the “spots” first appear, and a number of distinct cases of cure are recorded; but the doubt will always remain whether the disease which yields is really leprosy, or whether something else has not been confounded with an undeveloped stage of the true disease. However this may be, it is certain that after it has once become developed to any considerable extent it is incurable by any remedies at present known, although spontaneous cures do sometimes occur. The reliance for its control is more upon diet, cleanliness, and general regimen, than upon specific antidotes.
Medical observations upon the disease in modern times have been made in the island of Guadaloupe, where it broke out about the middle of the last century, and was very carefully investigated by M. Peyssonel, a physician sent out by the French government for the purpose. An account of the result, of his examination, as well as of other investigations of English, French, and German physicians in other islands of the West Indies whither it had been imported from Africa, and in other parts of the world is given by Michaelis (Laws of Moses, Art. 208, 210). Also of especial importance is a “Report on the leprosy in Norway by Dr. Danielssen, chief physician of the leper hospital at Bergen, and Prof. Boeck” (Paris, 1848). The subject of late years has considerably interested physicians, and the London “College of physicians” have published a report upon it, based upon a series of questions addressed to nearly all parts of the world where the disease now prevails. Many other authorities are cited by Clark in his preliminary note to these chapters. A particularly valuable discussion of the disease may be found in Wilson, Diseases of the skin, ch. xiii. (5th Am. Ed., pp. 300–314 and 333–381). The disease appears to have been more or less common in Western Europe from the eighth century down, but received a great extension at the time of the crusades. At one time a partial enumeration by Dugdale mentions eighty-five leper houses in England alone, six of which were in London, and it continued to linger in Scotland until the middle of the last century. It still exists to a considerable extent in Iceland and Norway, and in all the countries bordering the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean, especially Syria and Egypt, where it has found a home in all ages, in some parts of Africa, Arabia, and India.
The characteristics of the disease are the exceedingly slight symptoms at its first appearance; its insidious, and usually very slow progress, the horribly repulsive features of its later stages when the face becomes shockingly disfigured, and often the separate joints of the body become mortified and drop off one by one; and its usually sudden and unexpected termination at the last, when the leprosy reaches some vital organ, and gives rise to secondary disease, often dysentery, by which life is ended. Meanwhile, during the earlier stages, generally very prolonged, there is no suffering, and the ordinary enjoyments of life are uninterrupted.
Leprosy, with these characteristics, especially its hidden origin, and its insidious and resistless progress, has always seemed a mysterious disease, and among the heathen as well as among the Jews, has been looked upon as an infliction especially coming from God. In fact in Hebrew history it was so often employed in Divine judgments, as in the case of Miriam, of Gehazi, and of Uzziah, and was also so often healed by miraculous interposition, as in the case of Miriam also, and of Naaman, as to give some reason for this belief; while the peculiar treatment it received in the law tended still further to place leprosy in a position of alienation from the theocratic state, and actually included the leper in that “uncleanness” which was utterly excluded from approach to the sanctuary. The disease thus became a vivid symbolism of sin, and of the opposition in which this stands to the holiness of God; while at the same time its revolting aspect in its later stages made it such an image, and indeed a beginning, of death itself that it is often most appropriately described by Jewish as well as other writers as “a living death.” Much of the association with death and the body in the corruption of death, thus attached to leprosy and the corruption at work in leprosy. It is not necessary here to speak of the prevailing Hebrew notion that all suffering was the consequence of individual sin, and was proportioned in severity to the degree of that sin; for however deeply seated such ideas may have been in the minds of many of the Israelites, and however much they may have increased the popular dread and abhorrence of leprosy, they find no shadow of encouragement whatever in the law.
In regard to what is called “leprosy” in houses, in textile fabrics, and in leather, it is not necessary to suppose that the name is intended to convey the idea of an organic disease in these inanimate things. The law will still be sufficiently clear if we look upon the name as merely applied in these cases to express a kind of disintegration or corruption, such as could be most readily and popularly described, from certain similarities in appearance, by the figurative use of the word. In the same way the terms out of joint, sick, and others have come among ourselves to be popularly used of inanimate things, and such words as blistered, bald, and rotten, have a technical figurative sense almost more common than their original literal one. These modes of disintegration have been often investigated with great learning and labor; but it is not surprising that at this distance of time, and after such profound changes in the arts and the habits of men, the result of all such investigations should remain somewhat unsatisfactory. Just enough has been ascertained to show that inanimate things, of the classes here described, are subject to processes of decay which might be aptly described by the word leprosy; but precisely what the processes were to which the Levitical law had reference it is probably impossible now to ascertain definitely. The most satisfactory treatment of the subject from this point of view is to be found in Michaelis (ubi supra, Art. 211). He instances in regard to houses, the formation of saltpetre or other nitrous salts upon the walls to such an extent in some parts of Germany as to become an article of commercial importance, and to be periodically scraped off for the market. By others the existence of iron pyrites in the dolomitic limestone used for building in Palestine has been suggested as leading in its decomposition to precisely the appearances described in the law—hollow streaks of the green ferrous sulphate and the red of ferric sulphate—upon the walls of the houses affected; but proof is wanting of the existence in that stone of pyrites in sufficient abundance to produce the effects contemplated in the law. Both these explanations, however, are suggestive of methods of disintegration which might have occurred, but for the determination of which we have not sufficient data. It is the same with the explanation of Michaelis in regard to woolen fabrics,—that the wool itself is affected by diseases of the sheep upon which it has grown. The fact itself does not seem sufficiently well authenticated; nor if it were, would it be applicable to garments of linen. Nevertheless, this is suggestive of defects in the materials,—which were in all cases of organic production—arising either from diseased growth, or from unskilfulness in the art of their preparation, which would after a time manifest themselves in the product, much in the same way as old books now sometimes become spotted over with a “leprosy” arising from an insufficient removal of the chemicals employed in the preparation of the paper pulp.
But whatever the nature and origin of this sort of “leprosy,” it is plainly regarded in the Levitical law as is no sense contagious, or in any way calculated to produce directly injurious effects upon man. It is provided for in the law, it would appear, partly on the general ground of the inculcation of cleanliness, and partly from association with the human disease to which it bore an external resemblance, and to which the utmost repugnance was to be encouraged. Even the likeness and suggestion of leprosy was to be held unclean in the homes of Israel.
No mention has thus far been made of a theory of this disease adopted by many physicians, and which, if established, might really assimilate the leprosy in houses and garments and skins to that in the human body, and explain the origin of all alike by the same cause. According to this theory, the disease is occasioned by vegetable spores, which find a suitable nidus for their development either in the human skin or in the other substances mentioned. If this theory should be accepted, the origin and effects of the disintegrating agencies would be the same in all cases. The late eminent physician, Dr. J. K. Mitchell, in his work upon the origin of malarious and epidemic fevers (Five Essays, p. 94), after quoting the law in relation to leprosy, says: “There is here described a disease whose cause must have been of organic growth, capable of living in the human being, and of creating there a foul and painful disease of contagious character, while it could also live and reproduce itself in garments of wool, linen, or skin; nay more, it could attach itself to the walls of a house, and there also effect its own reproduction. Animalcules, always capable of choice, would scarcely be found so transferable; and we are therefore justified in supposing that green or red fungi so often seen in epidemic periods, were the protean disease of man, and his garment, and his house.” He further quotes from Hecker statements corroboratory of his views in regard to the plagues of 786 and 959. This theory, however, has not here been urged, partly because it yet needs further proof, partly because no theory at all is necessary to account for the Levitical legislation in view of the facts presented in the law.
For the literature of the subject, besides the reference above given, see the art. by Hayman, Leper, Leprosy, in Smith’s Bibl. Dict., and the Preliminary note on these chapters in Clark’s Com. on Lev., together with the appended notes to the same.
At the opening of his “Exegetical” Lange has the following, which may be appropriately placed here: “First of all, it must be made prominent that the leprosy, under the point of view taken, and the sentence of uncleanness, is placed as a companion to the uncleanness of birth, as the representative of all ways of death, of all sicknesses. It is unclean first in itself, as a death element in the stream of life—in the blood—even as the source of life appears disturbed in the relations of birth; but still more it is unclean as a sickness spreading by transmission and contagion.
“Hence it appears also as a polluting element of physical corruption, not only in men, but also through the analogy of an evil diffusing itself, in human garments and dwellings. The analogous evils of these were, on this account, called leprosy.
“In this extension over man and his whole sphere it is, in its characteristics, a speaking picture of sin and of evil the punishment of sin; it is, so to speak, the plastic manifestation, the medical phantom or representation of all the misery of sin.
“Accordingly the leprosy, and the contact with it, is the specific uncleanness which excluded the bearer of it from the theocratic community, so that he, as the typically excommunicated person, must dwell without the camp.
“Nothing is here said of the application of human means of healing in reference to this evil. The leper was left with his sickness to the mercy of God and to the wonderfully deep antithesis of recovery and death; the more so, since leprosy in a peculiar sense is a chronic crisis, a progressive disease, continually secreting matter, whether for life or for death. Mention is made of external counteraction only in regard to leprosy in garments and houses. Hence, from its nature, it is altogether placed under the supervision of the priest. The priest knew the characteristics of the leprosy, and the course of its crises; he had accordingly to decide upon the exclusion and upon the restoration of the sick, and to express the latter by the performance of the sacrifice of purification brought for this purpose by the convalescent.
“Thus in conformity to the spirit of Oriental antiquity, the priest here appears as the physician also for bodily sicknesses, as a watchman over the public health. But for the cosmic evils he was still less a match than for those of the body; against such the prophet must reveal miraculous helps, e.g., against the bitterness of the water, and against the bite of the fiery serpents.
“The great contrast between the Old and the New Testaments is made prominent in the fact, that in the Old Testament the touch of the leper made unclean,—apparently even leprous;—while Christ by His touch of the lepers cleansed them from their leprosy. But it continued to be left to the priest, as the representative of the old covenant, to pronounce the fact. See Comm. S. Matt., p. 150.”
“The name Leprosy, צָרַעַת is derived from צָרַע to strike down, to strike to the ground; the leprosy is the stroke of God. Gesenius distinguishes the leprosy in men, the leprosy in houses (probably the injury done by saltpetre), and the leprosy in garments (mould, mildew). On this chronic form of sickness, fully equal to the acute form of the plague, comp the article Leprosy (Aussatz) in the dictionaries, especially in Herzog’s Real-encyclopädie, and in Winer. Four principal forms are distinguished, of which three are particularly described by Winer: 1) The white leprosy, Barras, λευκή. “This prevailed among the Hebrews (2Ki_5:27, etc.) and has hence been called by physicians lepra Mosaica. See the description in Winer, I. p. 114. 2) The Elephantiasis, lepra nodosa, or tuberculosa, tubercular leprosy, Egyptian boil, thus endemic in Egypt. “The sickness of Job was commonly considered in antiquity to have been this kind of leprosy.” 3) The black leprosy or the dark Barras. Later medical researches (to which the articles in Bertheau’s Conversations-lexicon, and Schenkel’s Bibel-lexicon refer) show the differences between the various kinds as less defined; the contagious character is called in question by Furrer (in Schenkel). In this matter indeed, it is a question whether the rigid isolation of the leprous has not hindered, in a great degree, the examples of contagion.” For a catalogue of the literature, see Knobel, p. 469 and beyond.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 2. The plague of leprosy — The word leprosy…
THE LEPER.
2. The plague of leprosy — The word leprosy is of Greek origin, and literally signifies, the scaly disease. For its general meaning see note on Num_5:2. But the disease here treated of is evidently the so-called white leprosy, (Lepra Mosaica,) which is still found among the Arabs under the name of Baras. It is described by Trunsen as follows: “Very frequently, even for years before the actual outbreak of the disease itself, white, yellowish spots are seen lying deep in the skin, particularly on the genitals, face, forehead, or in the joints. They are without feeling, and sometimes cause the hair to assume the same colour as the spots. These spots afterwards pierce through the cellular tissue and reach the muscles and bones. The hair becomes white and woolly, and at length falls off; hard, gelatinous swellings are formed in the cellular tissue; the skin gets hard, rough, and seamy; lymph exudes from it, and forms large scabs, which fall off from time to time; and under these there are often offensive running sores. The nails then swell, curl up, and fall off; entropium (inversion of the eyelashes) is then formed, with bleeding gums; the nose is stopped up, and there is a considerable flow of saliva. The senses become dull, the patient gets weak and thin, wasting diarrhea sets in, and incessant thirst and burning terminate his sufferings.” There are three chief symptoms of this disease. (1.) A rising or swelling. (2.) A scab. (3.)
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A bright spot — This was of a white colour. These are described under six different circumstances, namely: 1.) Developed without any apparent cause, 2-8. 2.) Reappearing after the supposed cure, 9-17. 3.) Arising from the scar of a boil or a burn, 18-28. 4.) Appearing on the head or chin. 29-37. 5.) In the form called bohak, not unclean, 38-39. 6.) In a bald head, 40-44.
Unto Aaron the priest — The treatment was to be ceremonial, not medical. The command that the leper present himself not to the physician but to the priest, shows that the leprosy was in some way intimately associated with sin, for the priest’s office related to guilt. “There was no doctor then; he is a later creation. The Church is the true lazar-house; the Church is the great hospital. We have no instruction to the effect that one leper is to look on another; the distinct direction is that the priest — the holy, pure man — shall look at the leper — handle him, undertake him.”-Joseph Parker.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (1) And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron.—As…
XIII.
(1) And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron.—As laws of leprosy chiefly concerned the priests, who had to examine the symptoms and to decide whether they indicated the distemper or not, the Lord addressed the regulations to Aaron as well as to Moses. The leprosy discussed in this and the following chapters consists of three general classes: viz., (1) leprosy of man (Lev_13:2-46); (2) leprosy of garments (Lev_13:47-59); and (3) leprosy of houses (Lev_14:33-57).
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When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh.—In discussing the leprosy of man, the lawgiver enumerates six different circumstances under which it may develop itself. The first circumstance adduced in Lev_13:2-6 is of its developing itself without an apparent cause. Hence it was enjoined that if anyone should notice in the skin of his flesh a rising or swelling, he should be taken to the priest. As the description of these symptoms is very concise, and requires to be specified more minutely for practical purposes, the spiritual guides of Israel, who had to explain the law to the priests during the second Temple, and who came in personal contact with this distemper, defined them as follows :—
A rising.—That is, a swelling, or swollen spot.
Or bright spot.—That is, a bright or glossy pimple. But these symptoms, when indicative of leprosy, assume respectively one of two colours, a principal or a subordinate colour. The principal colour of the rising spot is like that of an egg-shell, and the secondary one resembles white wool; whilst the principal colour of the bright pimple is white as snow, and the subordinate resembles plaster on the wall.
Then he shall be brought unto Aaron.—The following rules obtained during the second Temple with regard to the examination of the patient. Though anyone may examine the disease except the patient himself or his relations, yet the priest alone can decide whether it is leprosy or not, because the law declares that the priests must decide cases of litigation and disease (Deu_21:5); hence the patient must “be brought unto Aaron,” &c. But though the priests only can pronounce the patient clean or unclean, even if he be a child or a fool, yet he must act upon the advice of a learned layman in those matters. If the priest is blind of one eye, or is weak-sighted, he is disqualified for examining the distemper. The inspection must not take place on the Sabbath, nor early in the morning, nor in the middle of the day, nor in the evening, nor on cloudy days, because the colour of the skin cannot properly be ascertained in those hours of the day; but it must take place in the third, fourth, fifth, seventh, eighth, and ninth hours.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. H. Mackintosh 1880 · Public Domain Leviticus 13 - 14
Leviticus 13 - 14
Of all the functions which, according to the Mosaic ritual, the priest had to discharge, none demanded more patient attention, or more strict adherence to the divine guide-book, than the discernment and proper treatment of leprosy. This fact must be obvious to every one who studies, with any measure of care, the very extensive and important section of our book at which we have now arrived.
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There were two things which claimed the priest’s vigilant care, namely, the purity of the assembly, and the grace which could not admit of the exclusion of any member, save on the most clearly-established grounds. Holiness could not permit any one to remain in who ought to be out; and, on the other hand, grace would not have any one out who ought to be in. Hence, therefore, there was the most urgent need, on the part of the priest, of watchfulness, calmness, wisdom, patience, tenderness, and enlarged experience. Things might seem trifling which, in reality, were serious; and things might look like leprosy which were not it at all. The greatest care and coolness were needed. Judgement rashly formed, a conclusion hastily arrived at, might involve the most serious consequences, either as regards the assembly or some individual member thereof.
This will account for the frequent occurrence of such expressions as the following, namely, "The priest shall look;" - "The, priest shall shut up him that hath the plague seven days;" - "And the priest shall look on him the seventh day;" - "Then the priest shall shut him up seven days more" - "And the priest shall look on him again the seventh day;" - "And the priest shall see him;" - "Then the priest shall consider." No case was to be hastily judged, or rashly decided. No opinion was to be formed from mere hearsay. Personal observation, priestly discernment, calm reflection, strict adherence to the written word - the holy, infallible guide book - all these things were imperatively demanded of the priest, if he would form a sound judgement of each case. He was not to be guided by his own thoughts, his own feelings, his own wisdom, in any thing. He had ample guidance in the word, if only he was subject thereto. Every point, every feature, every movement, every variation, every shade and character, every peculiar symptom and affection - all was provided for, with divine fullness and forethought; so that the priest only needed to be acquainted with, and subject to, the word in all things, in order to be preserved from ten thousand mistakes.
Thus much as to the priest and his holy responsibilities.
We shall now consider the disease of leprosy, as developed in a person, in a garment, or in a house.
Looking at this disease in a physical point of view, nothing can possibly be more loathsome; and being, so far as man is concerned, totally incurable, it furnishes a most vivid and appalling picture of sin - sin in one’s natures - in his circumstances - sin in an assembly. What a lesson for the soul in the fact that such a vile and humiliating disease should be used as a type of moral evil, whether in a member of God’s assembly, in the circumstances of any member, or in the assembly itself!
1. And first, then, as to leprosy in a person; or, in other words, the working of moral evil, or of that which might seem to be evil, in any member of the assembly. This is a matter of grave and solemn import - a matter demanding the utmost vigilance and care on the part of all who are concerned in the good of souls and in the glory of God, as involved in the well-being and purity of His assembly as a whole, or of each individual member thereof.
It is important to see that, while the broad principles of leprosy and its cleansing apply, in a secondary sense, to any sinner, yet, in the scripture now before us, the matter is presented in connection with those who were God’s recognised people. The person who is here seen as the subject of priestly examination, is a member of the assembly of God. It is well to apprehend this. God’s assembly must be kept pure, because it is His dwelling-place. No leper can be allowed to remain within the hallowed precincts of Jehovah’s habitation.
But, then, mark the care, the vigilance, the perfect patience, inculcated upon the priest, lest ought that was not leprosy might be treated as such, or lest ought that really was leprosy might be suffered to escape. Many things might appear "in the skin" - the place of manifestation" - like the plague of leprosy," which, upon patient, priestly investigation, would be found to be merely superficial. This was to be carefully attended to. Some blemish might make its appearance, upon the surface, which, though demanding the jealous care of the one who had to act for God, was not, in reality, defiling. And, yet, that which seemed but a superficial blemish might prove to be something deeper than the skin, something below the surface, something affecting the hidden springs of the constitution. All this claimed the most intense care on the part of the priest. (See ver. 2-11) Some slight neglect, some trifling oversight, might lead to disastrous consequences. It might lead to the defilement of the assembly, by the presence of a confirmed leper, or to the expulsion, for some superficial blemish, of a genuine member of the Israel of God.
Now, there is a rich fund of instruction in all this for the people of God. There is a difference between personal infirmity and the positive energy of evil - between mere defects and blemishes in the outward character, and the activity of sin in the members. No doubt, it is important to watch against our infirmities; for, if not watched, judged, and guarded against, they may become the source of positive evil. (See ver. 14-25) Everything of nature must be judged and kept down. We must not make any allowance for personal infirmity, in ourselves, though we should make ample allowance for it in others. Take, for example, the matter of an irritable temper. I should judge it in myself; I should make allowance for it in another. It may, like "the burning boil," in the case of an Israelite, (ver. 19, 20,) prove the source of real defilement - the ground of exclusion from the assembly. Every form of weakness must be watched, lest it become an occasion of sin. "A bald forehead" was not leprosy, but it was that in which leprosy might appear, and, hence, it had to be watched. There may be a hundred things which are not, in themselves, sinful, but which may become the occasion of sin, if not diligently looked after. Nor is it merely a question of what, in our estimation, may be termed Blots, blemishes, and personal infirmities, but even of what our hearts might feel disposed to boast of. Wit, humour, vivacity of spirit and temper; all these may become the source and centre of defilement. Each one has something to guard against - something to keep him ever upon the watch-tower. How happy it is that we have a Father’s heart to come to and count on, with respect to all such things We have the precious privilege of coming, at all times, into the presence of unrebuking, unupbraiding love, there to tell out all, and obtain grace to help in all, and full victory over all. We need not be discouraged, so long as we see such a motto inscribed on the door of our Father’s treasury, "He giveth more grace." Precious motto! It has no limit. It is bottomless and boundless.
We shall now proceed to inquire what was done in every case in which the plague of leprosy was unquestionably and unmistakably defined. The God of Israel could bear with infirmity, blemish, and failure; but the moment it became a case of defilement, whether in the head, the beard, the forehead, or any other part, it could not be tolerated in the holy assembly. "The leper, in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean. All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be." (Ver. 45, 46) Here was the leper’s condition - the leper’s occupation - the leper’s place. With rent garments, bare head, and covered lip; crying, Unclean, unclean; and dwelling outside, in the dreary solitude, the dismal desert waste. What could be more humiliating, what more depressing than this? "He shall dwell alone." He was unfit for communion or companionship. He was excluded from the only spot, in all the world, in which Jehovah’s presence was known or enjoyed.
Reader, behold, in the poor, solitary leper, a vivid type of one in whom sin is working. This is really what it means. It is not, as we shall see presently, a helpless, ruined, guilty, convicted sinner, whose guilt and misery have come thoroughly out, and who is, therefore, a fit subject for the love of God, and the blood of Christ. No; we see in the excluded leper, one in whom sin is actually working - one in whom there is the positive energy of evil. this is what defiles and shuts out from the enjoyment of the divine presence and the communion of saints. So long as sin is working, there can be no fellowship with God, or with His people. "He shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be." How long? "All the days wherein the plague shall be in him." This is a great practical truth. The energy of evil is the death-blow to communion. There may be the outward appearance, the mere form, the hollow profession; but communion there can be none, so long as the energy of evil is there. It matters not what the character or amount of the evil may be, if it were but the weight of a feather, if it were but some foolish thought, so long as it continues to work, it must hinder communion, it must cause a suspension of fellowship. It is when it rises to a head, when it comes to the surface, when it is brought thoroughly out, that it can be perfectly met and put away by the grace of God and by the blood of the Lamb.
This leads us to a deeply-interesting point in connection with the leper - a point which must prove a complete paradox to all save those who understand God’s mode of dealing with sinners. "And if a leprosy break; out abroad in the skin, and the leprosy cover all the skin of him that hath the plague, from his head even to his foot, wheresoever the priest looketh; then the priest shall consider; and, behold, if the leprosy be covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague: it is all turned white: he is clean." (Lev. 13: 12, 13) The moment a sinner is in his true place before God, the whole question is settled. Directly his real character is fully brought out, there is no further difficulty. He may have to pass through much painful exercise, ere he reaches this point - exercise consequent upon his refusal to take his true place - to bring out "all the truth," with respect to what he is; but the moment he is brought to say, from his heart, "just as I am," the free grace of God flows down to him. "When I kept silence, my bones waxed old, through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer." (Ps. 32: 3, 4) How long did this painful exercise continue? Until the whole truth was brought out - until all that which was working inwardly came fully to the surface. "I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin." (Ver. 5)
It is deeply interesting to mark the progress of the Lord’s dealing with the leprous man, from the moment that the suspicion is raised, by certain features in the place of manifestation, until the disease covers the whole man, "from the crown of the head unto the sole of the foot." There was no haste, and no indifference. God ever enters the place of judgement with a slow and measured pace; but when He does enter, He must act according to the claims of His nature. He can patiently investigate. He can wait for "seven days;" and should there be the slightest variation in the symptoms, He can wait for "seven days more;" but, the moment it is found to be the positive working of leprosy, there can be no toleration. "Without the camp shall his habitation be." How long? Until the disease comes fully to the surface. "If the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean." This is a most precious and interesting point. The very smallest speck of leprosy was intolerable to God; and yet, when the whole man was covered, from head to foot, he was pronounced clean - that is, he was a proper subject for the grace of God and the blood of atonement.
Thus is it, in every case, with the sinner. God is "Of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look upon iniquity;" (Hab. 1: 13;) and yet, the moment a sinner takes his true place, as one thoroughly lost guilty, and undone - as one in whom there is not so much as a single point on which the eye of Infinite Holiness can rest with complacency - as one who is so bad, that he cannot, possibly, be worse, there is an immediate, a perfect, a divine settlement of the entire matter. The grace of God deals with sinners; and when I know myself to be a sinner, I know myself to be one whom Christ came to save. The more clearly any one can prove me to be a sinner, the more clearly he establishes my title to the love of God, and the work of Christ. "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." (1 Peter 3: 18) Now, if I am "unjust;" I am one of those very people for whom Christ died, and I am entitled to all the benefits of His death. "There is not a just man upon earth;" and, inasmuch as I am "Upon earth," it is plain that I am "unjust;" and it is equally plain that Christ died for me - that he suffered for my sins. Since, therefore, Christ died for me, it is my happy privilege to enter into the immediate enjoyment of the fruits of His sacrifice. This is as plain as plainness itself. It demands no effort whatsoever. I am not called to be anything but just what I am. I am not called to feel, to experience, to realise anything. The word of God assures me that Christ died for me just as I am; and if He died for me I am as safe as He is Himself. There is nothing against me. Christ met all. He not only suffered for my "sins," but He "made an end of sin." He abolished the entire system in which, as a child of the first Adam, I stood, and He has introduced me into a new position, in association with Himself, and there I stand, before God, free from all charge of sin, and all fear of judgement.
Just as I am - without one plea,
But that thy blood was shed for me,
And that thou bidst me come to thee,
O Lamb of God, I come!
How do I know that His blood was shed for me? By the Scriptures. Blessed, solid, eternal ground of knowledge! Christ suffered for sins. I have gotten sins. Christ died "the just for the unjust." I am unjust. Wherefore, the death of Christ appropriates itself to me, as fully, as immediately, and as divinely, as though I were the only sinner upon earth. It is not a question of my appropriation, realisation, or experience. Many souls harass themselves about this. How often has one heard such language as the following, "Oh! I believe that Christ died for sinners, but I cannot realise that my sins are forgiven. I cannot apply, I cannot appropriate, I do not experience the benefit of Christ’s death." All this is self and not Christ. It is feeling and not Scripture. If we search from cover to cover of the blessed volume, we shall not find a syllable about being saved by realisation, experience, or appropriation. The Gospel applies itself to all who are on the ground of being lost. Christ died for sinners. That is just what I am. Wherefore, He died for me. How do I know this? Is it because I feel it? By no means. How then? By the word of God. "Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; he was buried and rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures." (1 Cor. 15: 3, 4) Thus it is all "according to the Scriptures." If it were according to our feelings, we should be in a deplorable way, for our feelings are hardly the same for the length of a day; but the scriptures are ever the same. "For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven." "Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name
No doubt, it is a very happy thing to realise. to feel, and to experience; but, if we put these things in the place of Christ, we shall neither have them nor the Christ that yields them. If I am occupied with Christ, I shall realise; but if I put my realisation in place of Christ, I shall have neither the one nor the other. This is the sad condition of thousands. Instead of resting on the stable authority of "the Scriptures," they are ever looking into their own hearts, and, hence, they are always uncertain and, as a consequence, always unhappy. A condition of doubt is a condition of torture. But how can I get rid of my doubt? Simply by relying on the divine authority of "the Scriptures." Of what do the Scriptures testify? Of Christ. (John 5) They declare that Christ died for our sins, and that He was raised again for our justification. (Rom. 4) This settles everything. The self-same authority that tells me I am unjust, tells me also that Christ died for me. Nothing can be plainer than this. If I were ought else than unjust, the death of Christ could not be for me at all, but being unjust, it is divinely fitted, divinely intended, and divinely applied to me. If I am occupied with anything in, of, or about myself, it is plain I have not entered into the full spiritual application of Lev. 13: 12, 13. I have not come to the Lamb of God, "just as I am." It is when the leper is covered from head to foot that he is on the true ground. It is there and there alone that grace can meet him. "Then the priest shall consider; and, behold, if the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague: it is all turned white: he is clean." Precious truth! "Where sin abounded grace did much more abound." So long as I think there is a single spot which in not covered with the direful disease, I have not come to, the end of myself. It is when my true condition is fully disclosed to my view, that I really understand the meaning of salvation by grace.
The force of all this will be more fully apprehended when we come to consider the ordinances connected with the cleansing of the leper, in Lev. 14. We shall, now, briefly enter upon the question of leprosy in a garment, as presented in Lev. 13: 47-59.
2. The garment or skin suggests to the mind the ides of a man’s circumstances or habits. This is a deeply practical point. We are to watch against the working of evil in our ways just as carefully as against evil in ourselves. The same patient investigation is observable with respect to, a garment as in the case of a person. There is no haste; neither is there any indifference. "The priest shall look upon the plague, and shut up it that hath the plague seven days." There must be no indifference, no indolence, no carelessness. Evil may creep into our habits and circumstances, in numberless ways; and, hence, the moment we perceive ought of a suspicious nature, it must be submitted to a calm, patient process of priestly investigation. It must be "shut up seven days," in order that it may have full time to develop itself perfectly.
"And he shall look on the plague on the seventh day: if the plague be spread in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in a skin, or in any work that is made of skin, the plague is a fretting leprosy; it is unclean. He shall therefore burn that garment." The wrong habit must be given up, the moment I discover it. If I find myself in a thoroughly wrong position, I must abandon it. The burning of the garment expresses the act of judgement upon evil, whether in a man’s habits or circumstances. There must be no trifling with evil. In certain cases the garment was to be "washed," which expresses the action of the Word of God upon a man’s habits. "Then the priest shall command that they wash the thing wherein the plague is, and he shall shut it up seven days more." There is to be patient waiting in order to ascertain the effect of the Word. "And the priest shall look on the plague, after that it is washed; and, behold, if the plague have not changed . . . . thou shalt burn it in the fire." When there is any thing radically and irremediably bad in one’s position or habits, the whole thing is to be given up. "And if the priest look, and, behold, the plague be somewhat dark: after the washing of it; then he shall rend it out of the garment." The Word may produce such an effect as that the wrong features in a man’s character, or the wrong points in his position, shall be given up, and the evil be got rid of; but if the evil continue, after all, the whole thing must be condemned and set aside.
There is a rich mine of practical instruction in all this. We must look well to the position which we occupy, the circumstances in which we stand, the habits we adopt, the character we wear. There is special need of watchfulness. Every suspicious symptom and trait must be sedulously guarded, lest it should prove, in the sequel, to be "a fretting "or "spreading leprosy," whereby we ourselves and many others may be defiled. We may be placed in a position attached to which there are certain wrong things which can be given up, without entirely abandoning the position; and, on the other hand, we may find ourselves in a situation in which it is impossible to" "abide with God." Where the eye is single, the path will be plain. Where the one desire of the heart is to enjoy the divine presence, we shall easily discover those things which tend to deprive us of that unspeakable blessing.
May our hearts be tender and sensitive. May we cultivate a deeper, closer walk with God; and may we carefully guard against every form of defilement, whether in person, in habit, or in association!
We shall, now, proceed to consider the beauteous and significant ordinances connected with the cleansing of the leper, in which we shall find some of the most precious truths of the gospel presented to us.
"And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, This shall be the law of the leper in the day of his cleansing: he shall be brought unto the priest: and the priest shall go forth out of the camp." (Lev. 14: 1-3) We have already seen the place which the leper occupied. He was outside the camp, in the place of moral distance from God - from His sanctuary and His assembly. Moreover, he dwelt in dreary solitude, in a condition of uncleanness. He was beyond the reach of human aid; and, as for himself, he could only communicate defilement to every one and every thing he touched. It was, therefore, obviously impossible that he could do ought to cleanse himself. If, indeed, he could only defile by his very touch, how could he possibly cleanse himself How could he contribute towards, or co-operate in, his cleansing? Impossible. As an unclean leper, he could not do so much as a single thing for himself; all had to be done for him. He could not make his way to God, but God could make His way to him. He was shut up to God. There was no help for him, either in himself or in his fellow-man. It is clear that one leper could not cleanse another; and it is equally clear that if a leper touched a clean person he rendered him unclean. His only resource was in God. He was to be a debtor to grace for everything.
Hence we read, "The priest shall go forth out of the camp. It is not said, "the leper shall go." this was wholly out of the question. It was of no use talking to the leper about going or doing. He was consigned to dreary solitude; whither could he go? He was involved in helpless defilement; what could he do? He might long for fellowship and long to be clean; but his longings were those of a lonely helpless leper. He might make efforts after cleansing; but his efforts could but prove him unclean, and tend to spread defilement. Before ever he could be pronounced "clean," a work; had to be wrought for him - a work which he could neither do nor help to do - a work which had to be wholly accomplished by another. The leper was called to "stand still," and behold the priest doing a work in virtue of which the leprosy could be perfectly cleansed. The priest accomplished all. The leper did nothing.
"Then shall the priest command to take for him that is to be cleansed, two birds, alive and clean, and cedarwood, and scarlet, and hyssop. and the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water." In the priest going forth from the camp - forth from God’s dwelling place - we behold the blessed Lord Jesus coming down from the bosom of the Father, His eternal dwelling-place, into this polluted world of ours, where He beheld us sunk in the polluting leprosy of sin. He, like the good Samaritan, "came where we were." He did not come half-way, merely. He did not come nine-tenths of the way. He came all the way. This was indispensable. He could not, consistently with the holy claims of the throne of God, have bidden our leprosy to depart had He remained in the bosom. He could call worlds into existence by the word of His mouth; but when leprous sinners had to be cleansed, something more was needed. "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son." When worlds were to be framed, God had but to speak, When sinners had to be saved, He had to give His Son. "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins." (1 John 4: 9, 10)
But there was far more to be accomplished than the mission and incarnation of the Son. It would have availed the leper but little indeed, had the priest merely gone forth from the camp and looked upon his low and forlorn condition. Blood shedding was essentially necessary ere leprosy could be removed. The death of a spotless victim was needed. "Without shedding of blood is no remission." (Heb. 9: 22) And, be it observed, that the shedding of blood was the real basis of the leper’s cleansing. It was not a mere circumstance which, in conjunction with others, contributed to the leper’s cleansing. By no means. the giving up of the life was the grand and all-important fact. when this was accomplished the way was open; every barrier was removed; God could deal in perfect grace with the leper. this point should be distinctly laid hold of, if my reader would fully enter into the glorious doctrine of the blood.
"And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water." Here we have the acknowledged type of the death of Christ, "who through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God." "He was crucified in weakness." (Heb. 9; 2 Cor. 13) The greatest, the mightiest, the most glorious, the most momentous work that ever was accomplished, throughout the wide universe of God, was wrought "in weakness." Oh! my reader, how terrible a thing must sin be, in the judgement of God, when His own beloved Son had to come down from heaven, and hang upon yonder cursed tree, a spectacle to men, to angels, and to devils, in order that you and I might be forgiven! And what a type of sin have we in leprosy! Who would have thought that that little "bright spot" appearing on the person of some member of the congregation was a matter of such grave consequence? But, ah! that little "bright spot" was nothing less than the energy of evil, in the place of manifestation. It was the index of the dreadful working of sin in the nature; and ere that person could be fitted for a place in the assembly, or for the enjoyment of communion with a holy God, the Son of God had to leave those bright heavens, and descend into the lowest parts of the earth, in order to make a full atonement for that which exhibited itself merely in the form of a little "bright spot." Let us remember this. Sin is a dreadful thing in the estimation of God. He cannot tolerate so much as a single sinful thought. Before one such thought could be forgiven, Christ had to die upon the cross. The most trifling sin, if any sin can be called trifling, demanded nothing less than the death of God’s Eternal and Co-equal Son. But, eternal praise be to God, what sin demanded, redeeming love freely gave; and now God is infinitely more glorified in the forgiveness of sins than He could have been had Adam maintained his original innocency. God is more glorified in the salvation, the pardon, the justification, the preservation, and final glorification of guilty man, than He could have been in maintaining an innocent man in the enjoyment of creation blessings. Such is the precious mystery of redemption. May our hearts enter, by the power of the Holy Ghost, into the living and profound depths of this wondrous mystery!
"As for the living bird, he shall take it, and the cedar wood, and the scarlet, and the hyssop, and shall dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water. And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose into the open field." The blood being shed, the priest can enter directly and fully upon his work. Up to this, we read, "the priest shall command;" but now he acts immediately himself. The death of Christ is the basis of His priestly ministration. Having entered with His own blood into the holy place, He acts as our Great High Priest, applying to our souls all the precious results of His atoning work, and maintaining us in the full and divine integrity of the position into which His sacrifice has introduced us. "For every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices: wherefore it is of necessity that this man have somewhat also to offer. For if he were on earth he should not be a priest." (Heb. 8: 3, 4)
We could hardly have a more perfect type of the resurrection of Christ than that presented in "the living bird let loose into the open field." It was not let go until after the death of its companion; for the two birds typify one Christ, in two stages of His blessed work, namely, death and resurrection. Ten thousand birds let loose would not have availed for the leper. It was that living bird, mounting upward into the open heavens, bearing upon his wing that significant token of accomplished atonement - it was that which told out the great fact that the work was done - the ground cleared, the foundation laid. Thus is it in reference to our blessed Lord Jesus Christ. His resurrection declares the glorious triumph of redemption. "He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures." "He was raised again for our justification." It is this that sets the burdened heart free, and liberates the struggling conscience. The scripture assures me that Jesus was nailed to the cross under the weight of my sins; but the same Scriptures assure me that He rose from the grave without one of those sins upon Him. Nor is this all. The same Scriptures assure me that all who put their trust in Jesus are as free from all charge of guilt as He is; that there is no more wrath or condemnation for them than for Him; that they are in Him, one with Him, accepted in Him; co-quickened, co-raised, co-seated with Him. Such is the peace giving testimony of the Scriptures of truth - such, the record of God who cannot lie. (See Rom. 6: 6-11; Rom. 8: 1-4; 2 Cor, 5: 21; Eph. 2: 5, 6; Col. 2: 10-15, 1 John 4: 17)
But we have another most important truth set before us in ver 6 of our chapter. We not only see our full deliverance from guilt and condemnation, as beautifully exhibited in the living bird let loose, but we see also our entire deliverance from all the attractions of earth and all the influences of nature. "The scarlet" would be the apt expression of the former, while "the cedar wood and hyssop" would set forth the latter. The cross is the end of all this world’s glory. God presents it as such, and the believer recognises it as such. "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." (Gal. 6: 14)
Then, as to the "cedar wood and hyssop," they present to us, as it were, the two extremes of nature’s wide range. Solomon "spoke of trees, from the cedar tree that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall." (1 Kings 4: 33) From the lofty cedar which crowns the sides of Lebanon, down to the lowly hyssop - the wide extremes and all that lies between - nature, in all its departments, is brought under the power of the cross; so that the believer sees, in the death of Christ, the end of all his guilt, the end of all earth’s glory, and the end of the whole system of nature - the entire old creation. And with what is he to be occupied? With Him who is the Antitype of that living bird, with blood-stained feathers, ascending into the open heavens. Precious, glorious, soul-satisfying object! A risen, ascended, triumphant, glorified Christ, who has passed into the heavens, bearing in His sacred Person the marks of an accomplished atonement. It is with Him we have to do. We are shut up to Him. He is God’s exclusive object. He is the centre of heaven’s joy, the theme of angels’ song. We want none of earth’s glory, none of nature’s attractions. We can behold them all, together with our sin and guilt, for ever set aside by the death of Christ. We can well afford to dispense with earth and nature, inasmuch as we have gotten, instead thereof "the unsearchable riches of Christ."
"And he shall sprinkle upon him that is to be cleansed from the leprosy, seven times, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the bird loose into the open field." The more deeply we ponder over the contents of Lev. 13 the more clearly we shall see how utterly impossible it was for the leper to do ought towards his own cleansing. All he could do was to "put a covering upon his upper lip;" and all he could say was, "Unclean, unclean." It belonged to God, and to Him alone, to devise and accomplish a work whereby the leprosy could be perfectly cleansed; and, further, it belonged to God, and to Him alone, to pronounce the leper "clean." Hence it is written," the priest shall sprinkle;" and "he shall pronounce him clean." It is not said, "the leper shall sprinkle, and pronounce, or imagine himself, clean." This would never do. God was the Judge - God was the Healer - God was the Cleanser. He alone knew what leprosy was, how it could be put away, and when to pronounce the leper clean. The leper might have gone on all his days covered with leprosy, and yet be wholly ignorant of what was wrong with him. It was the word of God - the Scriptures of truth - the divine Record, that declared the full truth as to leprosy; and nothing short of the self-same authority could pronounce the leper clean, and that, moreover, only, on the solid and indisputable ground of death and resurrection. There is the most precious connection between the three things in verse 7: the blood is sprinkled, the leper pronounced clean, and the living bird let loose. There is not so much as a single syllable about what the leper was to do, to say, to think, or to feel. It was enough that he was a leper; a fully revealed, a thoroughly judged leper, covered from head to foot. this sufficed for him; all the rest pertained to God.
It is of all importance, for the anxious inquirer after peace, to enter into the truth unfolded in this branch of our subject. So many are tried by the question of feeling, realising, and appropriating, instead of seeing, as in the leper’s case, that the sprinkling of the blood was as independent and as divine as the shedding of it. It is not said, "The leper shall apply, appropriate, or realise, and then he shall be clean." By no means. The plan of deliverance was divine; the provision of the sacrifice was divine; the shedding of the blood was divine; the sprinkling of the blood as divine; the record as to the result was divine: in short, it was all divine.
It is not that we should undervalue realisation, or, to speak more correctly, communion, through the Holy Ghost, with all the precious results of Christ’s work for as. Far from it: we shall see, presently, the place assigned thereto, in the divine economy. But then, we are no more saved by realisation, than the leper was cleansed by it. The gospel, by which we are saved, is that "Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures." There is nothing about realisation here. No doubt, it is happy to realise. It is a very happy thing for one, who was just on the point of being drowned, to realise himself in a life-boat; but, clearly, he is saved by the boat and not by his realisation. So it is with the sinner that believes on the Lord Jesus Christ. He is saved by death and resurrection. Is it because he realises it? No; but because God says it. It is "according to the Scriptures." Christ died and rose again; and, on that ground, God pronounces him clean.
"No condemnation, O, my soul!
’Tis God that speaks the word…
This gives immense peace to the soul. I have to do with God’s plain record, which nothing can ever shake. That record has reference to God’s own work. It is He Himself, who has wrought all that was needful, in order to my being pronounced clean in His sight. My pardon no more depends upon my realisation than upon any "works of righteousness that I have done;" and it no more depends upon my works of righteousness than it does upon my crimes. In a word, it depends, exclusively, upon the death and resurrection of Christ. How do I know it? God tells me. It is "according to the scriptures."
There are, perhaps, few things which disclose the deep-seated legality of our hearts, more strikingly, that this oft-raised question of realisation. We will have in something of self, and thus so sadly mar our peace and liberty in Christ. It is mainly because of this that I dwell, at such length, upon the beautiful ordinance of The cleansing of the leper, and especially on the truth unfolded in Lev. 14: 7. It was the priest that sprinkled the blood; and it was the priest that pronounced the leper clean. Thus it is in the case of the sinner. The moment he is on his true ground, the blood of Christ and the word of God apply themselves without any further question or difficulty whatever. But the moment this harassing question of realisation is raised, the peace is disturbed, the heart depressed, and the mind bewildered. the more thoroughly I get done with self, and become occupied with Christ, as presented in "the Scriptures," the more settled my peace will be. If the leper had looked at himself, when the priest pronounced him clean, would he have found any basis for the declaration? Surely not. The sprinkled blood was the basis of the divine record, and not anything in, or connected with, the leper. The leper was not asked how he felt, or what he thought. He was not questioned as to whether he had a deep sense of the vileness of his disease. He was an acknowledged leper; that was enough. It was for such an one the blood was shed; and that blood made him clean. How did he know this? Was it because he felt it? No; but because the priest, on God’s behalf, and by His authority told him so. The leper was pronounced clean on the very same ground that the living bird was let loose. The same blood which stained the feathers of that living bird was sprinkled upon the leper. This was a perfect settlement of the whole affair, and that, too, in a manner entirely independent of the leper, the leper’s thoughts, his feelings, and his realisation. Such is the type. had when we look from the type to the Antitype, we see that our blessed Lord Jesus Christ entered heaven, and laid on the throne of God the eternal record of an accomplished work, in virtue of which the believer enters also. This is a most glorious truth, divinely calculated to dispel from the heart of the anxious inquirer every doubt, every fear, every bewildering thought, and every harassing question. A risen Christ is God’s exclusive object, and He sees every believer in Him. May every awakened soul find abiding repose in this emancipating truth.
"And he that is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, and shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean: and after that he shall come into the camp, and shall tarry abroad out of his tent seven days." (Ver. 8) The leper, being pronounced clean, can begin to do what he could not even have attempted to do before, namely, to cleanse himself, cleanse his habits, shave off all his hair; and, having done so, he is privileged to take his place in the camp - the place of ostensible, recognised, public relationship with the God of Israel, whose presence in that camp it was which rendered the expulsion of the leper needful. The blood having been applied in its expiating virtue, there is the washing of water, which expresses the action of the word on the character, the habits, the ways, so as to render the person, not only in God’s view, but also in the view of the congregation, morally and practically fit for a place in the public assembly.
But, be it observed, the man, though sprinkled with blood and washed with water, and thus entitled to a position in the public assembly, was not permitted to enter his own tent. He was not permitted to enter upon the full enjoyment of those private, personal privileges, which belonged to his own peculiar place in the camp. In other words, though knowing redemption through the shed and sprinkled blood, and owning the word as the rule, according to which his person and all his habits should be cleansed and regulated, he had yet to be brought, in the power of the Spirit, into full, intelligent communion with his own special place, portion, and privileges in Christ.
I speak according to the doctrine of the type; and I feel it to be of importance to apprehend the truth unfolded therein. It is too often overlooked. There are many, who own the blood of Christ as the alone ground of pardon, and the word of God as that whereby alone their habits, ways, and associations are to be cleansed and ordered, who, nevertheless, are far from entering, by the power of the Holy Ghost, into communion with the preciousness and excellency of that One, Whose blood has put away their sins, and whose word is to cleanse their practical habits. They are in the place of ostensible and actual relationship; but not in the power of personal communion. It is perfectly true, that all believers are in Christ, and, as such, entitled to communion with the very highest truths. Moreover, they have the Holy Ghost, as the power of communion. All this is divinely true; but, then, there is not that entire setting aside of all that pertains to nature, which is really essential to the power of communion with Christ, in all the aspects of His character and work. In point of fact, this latter will not be fully known to any until "the eighth day" - the day of resurrection-glory, when we shall know even as we are known. Then, indeed, each one for himself, and all together, shall enter into the full, unhindered Power of communion with Christ, in all the precious phases of His Person, and features of His character, unfolded from verse 10 to 20 of our chapter. Such is the hope set before us; but, even now, in proportion as we enter, by faith, through the mighty energy of the indwelling Spirit, into the death of nature and all pertaining thereto, we can feed upon and rejoice in Christ as the portion of our souls, in the place of individual communion.
"But it shall be on the seventh day, that he shall shave all his hair off his head, and his beard, and his eyebrows, even all his hair he shall shave off: and he shall wash his clothes, also he shall wash his flesh in water, and he shall be clean." (Ver. 9.) Now, it is clear, that the leper was just as clean, in God’s judgement, on the first day, when the blood was sprinkled upon him, in its sevenfold or perfect efficacy, as he was on the seventh day. Wherein, then, was the difference? Not in his actual standing and condition, but in his personal intelligence and communion. On the seventh day, he was called to enter into the full and complete abolition of all that pertained to nature. He was called to apprehend that, not merely was nature’s leprosy to be put away, but nature’s ornaments - yea, all that was natural - all that belonged to the old condition.
It is one thing to know, as a doctrine, that God sees my nature to be dead, and it is quite another thing for me to "reckon" myself as dead - to put off, practically, the old man and his deeds - to mortify my members which are on the earth. This, probably, is what many godly persons mean when they speak of progressive sanctification. They mean a right thing, though they do not put it exactly as the Scriptures do. The leper was pronounced clean, the moment the blood was sprinkled upon Him; and yet he had to cleanse himself. How was this? In the former case, he was clean, in the judgement of God; in the latter, he was to be clean practically, in his own personal intelligence, and in his manifested character. Thus it is with the believer. He is, as one with Christ, "washed, sanctified, and justified" - "accepted" - "complete." (1 Cor. 6: 11; Eph. 1: 6; Col 2: 10) Such is his unalterable standing and condition before God. He is as perfectly sanctified as he is justified, for Christ is the measure of both the one and the other, according to God’s judgement and view of the case. But, then, the believer’s apprehension of all this, in his own soul, and his exhibition thereof in his habits and ways, open up quite another line of things. Hence it is we read," Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." (2 Cor. 7: 1) It is because Christ has cleansed us by His precious blood that therefore we are called to" cleanse ourselves" by the application of the word, through the Spirit. "This is he that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness. because the Spirit is truth. For there are three that bear record, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one." (1 John 5: 6-8) Here we have atonement by the blood, cleansing by the word, and power by the Spirit, all founded upon the death of Christ, and all vividly foreshadowed in the ordinances connected with the cleansing of the leper.
"And on the eighth day he shall take two he lambs without blemish, and one ewe lamb of the first year without blemish, and three tenth deals of fine flour for a meat offering, mingled with oil, and one log of oil. And the priest that maketh him clean shall present the man that is to be made clean, and those things, before the Lord, at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And the priest shall take one he lamb, and offer him for a trespass offering, and the log of oil, and wave them for a wave offering before the Lord." (Ver. 10-12) The entire range of offerings is here introduced; but it is the trespass offering which is first killed, inasmuch as the leper is viewed as an actual trespasser. This in true in every case. As those, who have trespassed against God, we need Christ as the one who atoned, on the cross, for those trespasses. "Himself bare our sins in his own body on the tree." The first view which the sinner gets of Christ is as the Antitype of the trespass offering.
"And the priest shall take some of the blood of the trespass offering, and the priest shall put it upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot." "The ear" - that guilty member which had so frequently proved a channel of communication for vanity, folly, and even uncleanness - that ear must be cleansed by the blood of the trespass offering. Thus all the guilt, which I have ever contracted by that member, is forgiven according to God’s estimate of the blood of Christ. "The right hand," which had, so frequently, been stretched forth for the execution of deeds of vanity, folly, and even uncleanness, must be cleansed by the blood of the trespass offering. Thus all the guilt, which I have ever contracted by that member, is forgiven, according to God’s estimate of the blood of Christ. "The foot," which had so often run in the way of vanity, folly, and even uncleanness, must now be cleansed by the blood of the trespass offering, so that all the guilt, which I have ever contracted by that member, is forgiven, according to God’s estimate of the blood of Christ. Yes; all, all, all is forgiven - all is cancelled - all forgotten - all sunk as lead in the mighty waters of eternal oblivion. Who shall bring it up again? Shall angel, man, or devil, be able to plunge into those unfathomed and unfathomable waters, to bring up from thence those trespasses of "foot," "hand," or "ear," which redeeming love has cast thereinto? Oh! no; blessed be God, they are gone, and gone for ever. I am better off, by far, than if Adam had never sinned. Precious truth! To be washed in the blood is better far than to be clothed in innocency.
But God could not rest satisfied with the mere blotting out of trespasses, by the atoning blood of Jesus. This, in itself, is a great thing; but there is something greater still.
"And the priest shall take some of the log of oil, and pour it into the palm of his own left hand: and the priest shall dip his right finger in the oil that is in his left hand, and shall sprinkle of the oil with his finger seven times before the Lord. And of the rest of the oil that is in his hand shall the priest put upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot, upon the blood of the trespass offering; and the remnant of the oil that is in the priest’s hand, he shall pour upon the head of him that is to be cleansed; and the priest shall make an atonement for him before the Lord." (Ver. 15-18) Thus, not only are our members cleansed by the blood of Christ, but also consecrated to God, in the power of the Spirit. God’s work is not only negative, but positive. The ear is no longer to be the vehicle for communicating defilement, but to be "swift to hear" the voice of the Good Shepherd. The hand is no longer to be used as the instrument of unrighteousness, but to be stretched forth in acts of righteousness, grace, and true holiness. The foot is no longer to tread in folly’s paths, but to run in the way of God’s holy commandments. And, finally, the whole man is to be dedicated to God in the energy of the Holy Ghost.
It is deeply interesting to see that "the oil" was put upon the blood of the trespass offering." The blood or Christ is the divine basis of the operations of the Holy Ghost. The blood and the oil go together. As sinners we could know nothing of the latter save on the ground of the former. The oil could not have been put upon the leper until the blood of the trespass offering had first been applied. "In whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of Promise." The divine accuracy of the type evokes the acclamation of the renewed mind. The more closely we scrutinise it - the more of the light of Scripture we concentrate upon it - the more its beauty, force, and precision, are perceived and enjoyed. All, as might justly be expected, is in the most lovely harmony with the entire analogy of the word of God. There is no need for any effort of the mind. Take Christ as the key to unlock the rich treasury of the types; explore the precious contents by the light of Inspiration’s heavenly lamp; let the Holy Ghost be your interpreter; and you Cannot fail to be edified, enlightened, and blessed.
"And the priest shall offer the sin offering, and make an atonement for him that is to be cleansed from his uncleanness." Here we have a type of Christ, not only as the bearer of our trespasses, but also as the One, who made an end of sin, root and branch; the One, who destroyed the entire system of sin - "The Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world." "The propitiation for the whole world." As the trespass offering, Christ put away all my trespasses. As the sin offering, He met the great root from whence those trespasses emanated. He met all; but it is as the trespass offering I first know Him, because it is as such I first need Him. It is the "conscience of sins" that first troubles me. This is divinely met by my precious Trespass Offering. Then, as I get on, I find that all these sins had a root, a parent stem, and what root or stem I find within me. This, likewise, in divinely met by my precious Sin Offering. The order, as presented in the leper’s case, is perfect. It is precisely the order which we can trace in the actual experience of every soul. The trespass offering comes first, and then the sin offering.
"And afterward he shall kill the burnt offering." This offering presents the highest possible aspect of the death of Christ. It is Christ offering Himself without spot to God, without special reference to either trespasses or sin. It is Christ in voluntary devotedness, walking to the cross, and there offering Himself as a sweet savour to God.
"And the priest shall offer the burnt offering and the meat offering upon the altar: and the priest shall make an atonement for him, and he shall be clean." (ver. 20.) The meat offering typifies "the man Christ Jesus" in His perfect human life. It is intimately associated, in the case of the cleansed leper, with the burnt offering; and so it is in the experience of every saved sinner. It is when we know our trespasses are forgiven, and the root or principle of sin judged, that we can, according to our measure, by the power of the Spirit, enjoy communion with God about that blessed One, who lived a perfect human life, down here, and then offered Himself without spot to God on the cross. Thus, the four classes of offerings are brought before us in their divine order, in the cleansing of the leper - namely, the trespass offering, the sin offering, the burnt offering, and the meet offering, each exhibiting its own specific aspect of our blessed Lord Jesus Christ.
Here closes the record of the Lord’s dealings with the leprous man; and, oh! what a marvellous record it is! What an unfolding of the exceeding hatefulness of sin, the grace and holiness of God, the preciousness of Christ’s Person, and the efficacy of His work! Nothing can be more interesting than to mark the footprints of divine grace forth from the hallowed precincts of the sanctuary, to the defiled place where the leper stood, with bare head, covered lip, and rent garments. God visited the leper where he was; but He did not leave him there. He went forth prepared to accomplish a work, in virtue of which he could bring the leper into a higher place, and higher communion than ever he had known before. On the ground of this work, the leper was conducted from his Place of defilement and loneliness to the very door of the tabernacle of the congregation, the priestly place, to enjoy priestly privileges. (Comp. Ex. 29: 20, 21, 32) How could he ever have climbed to such an elevation! Impossible For ought he could do, he might have languished and died in his leprosy, had not the sovereign grace of the God of Israel stooped to lift him from the dunghill, to set him among the princes of His people. If ever there was a case in which the question of human effort, human merit, and human righteousness, could be fully tried and perfectly settled, the leper is, unquestionably, that case. Indeed it were a sad loss of time to discuss such a question in the presence of such a case. It must be obvious, to the most cursory reader, that nought but free grace, reigning through righteousness, could meet the leper’s condition and the leper’s need. And how gloriously and triumphantly did that grace act! It travelled down into the deepest depths, that it might raise the leper to the loftiest heights. See what the leper lost, and see what he gained! He lost all that pertained to nature, and he gained the blood of atonement and the grace of the Spirit. I mean typically. Truly, he was a gainer, to an incalculable amount. He was infinitely better off than if he had never been thrust forth from the camp. Such is the grace of God! Such the power And value, the virtue and efficacy, of the blood of Jesus!
How forcibly does all this remind us of the prodigal, in Luke 15! In him, too, leprosy had wrought and risen to a head. He had been afar off in the defiled place, where his own sins and the intense selfishness of the far country had created a solitude around him. But, blessed for ever be a Father’s deep and tender love, we know how it ended. The prodigal found a higher place, and tasted higher communion than ever he had known before. "The fatted calf’ had never been slain for him before. "The best robe" had never been on him before. And how was this? Was it a question of the prodigal’s merit? Oh! no; it was simply a question of the Father’s love.
Dear reader, let me ask, can you ponder over the record of God’s dealings with the leper, in Leviticus 14, or the Father’s dealings with the prodigal, in Luke 15, and not have an enlarged sense of the love that dwells in the bosom of God, that flows through the Person and work of Christ, that is recorded in the Scriptures of truth, and brought home to the heart by the Holy Ghost? Lord grant us a deeper and more abiding fellowship with Himself!
From verse 21 to 32 we have "the law of him in whom is the plague of leprosy, whose hand is not able to get that which pertaineth to his cleansing." This refers to the sacrifices of "the eighth day," and not to the "two birds alive and clean." These latter could not be dispensed with in any case, because they set forth the death and resurrection of Christ as the alone ground on which God can receive a sinner back to Himself. On the other hand, the sacrifices of" the eighth day," being connected with the soul’s communion, must, in some degree, be affected by the measure of the soul’s apprehension. But, whatever that measure may be, the grace of God can meet it with those peculiarly touching words, "such as he is able to get." And, not only so, but" the two turtle doves" conferred the same privileges on the "poor," as the two lambs conferred upon the rich, inasmuch as both the one and the other pointed to "the precious blood of Christ," which is of infinite, changeless, and eternal efficacy in the judgement of God. All stand before God on the ground of death and resurrection. All are brought into the same place of nearness; but all do not enjoy the same measure of communion - all have not the same measure of apprehension of the preciousness of Christ in all the aspects of His work. They might, if they would; but they allow themselves to be hindered, in various ways. Earth and nature, with their respective influences, act prejudicially; The Spirit is grieved, and Christ is not enjoyed as He might be. It is utterly vain to expect that, if we are living in the region of nature, we can be feeding upon Christ. No; there must be self emptiness, self-denial, self-judgement, if we would habitually feed upon Christ. It is not a question of salvation. It is not a question of the leper introduced into the camp - the place of recognised relationship. By no means. It is only a question of the soul’s communion, of its enjoyment of Christ. As to this, the largest measure lies open to us. We may have communion with the very highest truths; but, if our measure be small, the unupbraiding grace of our Father’s heart breathes in the sweet words, "such as he is able to get." The title of all is the same, however our capacity may vary; and, blessed be God, when we get into His presence, all the desires of the new nature, in their utmost intensity, are satisfied; all the powers of the new nature, in their fullest range, are occupied. May we prove these things in our souls’ happy experience, day by day!
We shall close this section with a brief reference to the subject of leprosy in a house.
3. The reader will observe, that a case of leprosy, in a person, or in a garment, might occur in the wilderness; but, in the matter of a house, it was, of necessity, confined to the land of Canaan. "When ye be come into the land of Canaan, which I give to you for a possession, and I put the plague of leprosy in a house of the land of your possession, . . . . .then the priest shall command that they empty the house, before the priest go into it to see the plague, that all that is in the house be not made unclean; and afterward the priest shall go in to see the house. And he shall look on the plague; and, behold, if the plague be in the walls of the house with hollow strakes, greenish or reddish, which in sight are lower than the wall; then the priest shall go out of the house to the door of the house, and shut up the house seven days."
Looking at the house as the type of an assembly, we have some weighty principles presented to us as to the divine method of dealing with moral evil, or suspicion of evil, in a congregation. We observe the same holy calmness and perfect patience with respect to the house, as we have already seen, in reference to the person or the garment. There was no haste, and no indifference, either as regards the house, the garment, or the individual. The man who had an interest in the house was not to treat with indifference any suspicious symptoms appearing in the wall thereof; neither was he to pronounce judgement himself upon such symptoms. It belonged to the priest to investigate and to judge. The moment that ought of a questionable nature made its appearance, the priest assumed a judicial attitude with respect to the house. The house was under judgement, though not condemned. The perfect period was to be allowed to run its course, ere any decision could be arrived at. The symptoms might prove to be merely superficial, in which case there would be no demand for any action whatever.
"And the priest shall come again The seventh day, and shall look: and, behold, if the plague be spread in the walls of the house, then the priest shall command that they take away the stones in which the plague is, and they shall cast them into an unclean place without the city." The whole house was not to be condemned. The removal of the leprous stones was first to be tried.
"And if the plague come again, and break out in the house, after that he hath taken away the stones, and after that he hath scraped the house, and after that it is plastered; then the priest shall come and look; and, behold, if the plague be spread in the house. it is a fretting leprosy in the house: it is unclean. And he shall break; down the house, the stones of it, and the timber thereof, and all the mortar of the house; and he shall carry them forth out of the city into an unclean place." The case was hopeless, the evil irremediable, the whole building was annihilated.
"Moreover, he that goeth into the house all the while that it is shut up shall be unclean until the even. And he that lieth in the house shall wash his clothes; and he that eateth in the house shall wash his clothes." This is a solemn truth. Contact defiles! Let us remember this. It was a principle largely inculcated under the Levitical economy; and, surely, it is not less applicable now.
"And if the priest shall come in, and look upon it, and, behold, the plague hath not spread in the house, after the house was plastered; then the priest shall pronounce the house clean, because the plague is healed." The removal of the defiled stones, &c., had arrested the progress of the evil, and rendered all further judgement needless. The house was no longer to be viewed as in a judicial place; but, being cleansed by the application of the blood, it was again fit for occupation.
And, now, as to the moral of all this. It is, at once, interesting, solemn, and practical. Look, for example, at the church at Corinth. It was a spiritual house, composed of spiritual stones; but, alas! the eagle eye of the apostle discerned upon its walls certain symptoms of a most suspicious nature. Was he indifferent? Surely not. He had imbibed far too much of the spirit of the Master of the house to admit, for one moment, of any such thing. But he was no more hasty than indifferent. He commanded the leprous stone to be removed, and gave the house a thorough scraping. Having acted thus faithfully, he patiently awaited the result. And what was that result? All that the heart could desire. "Nevertheless, God, that comforteth those that are cast down, comforted us by the coming of Titus; and not by his coming only, but by the consolation wherewith he was comforted in you, when he told us your earnest desire, your mourning, your fervent mind toward me; so that I rejoiced the more . . . . . . . In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter." (Comp. 1 Cor. 5 with 2 Cor. 7: 11) This is a lovely instance. The zealous care of the apostle was amply rewarded; the plague was stayed, and the assembly delivered from the defiling influence of unjudged moral evil.
Take another solemn example. "And to the angel of the church in Pergamos write: These things saith he that hath the sharp sword with two edges; I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is; and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in those days wherein Antipas was my faithful martyr, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth. But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to cast a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication. So hast thou also them that hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitanes, Which thing I hate. Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth." (Rev. 2: 12-16.) Here the divine Priest stands in a judicial attitude with respect to His house at Pergamos. He could not be indifferent to symptoms so alarming; but He patiently and graciously gives time to repent. If reproof or warning, and discipline, prove unavailing, judgement must take its course.
These things are full of practical teaching as to the doctrine of the assembly. The seven churches of Asia afford various striking illustrations of the house under priestly judgement. We should ponder them deeply and prayerfully. They are of immense value. We should never sit down, at ease, so long as ought of a suspicious nature is making its appearance in the assembly. We may be tempted to say, "It is none of my business;" but it is the business of every one who loves the Master of the house to have a jealous, godly care, for the purity of that house; and if we shrink; from the due exercise of this care, it will not be for our honour or profit, in the day of the Lord.
I shall not pursue this subject any further in these pages and shall merely remark, in closing this section, that I do not doubt, in the least, that this whole subject of leprosy has a great dispensational bearing, not only upon the house of Israel, but also upon the professing church.
C. H. Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain UNCLEANNESS DERIVED FROM LEPROSY OR CONTACT WITH LEPERS AND…
UNCLEANNESS DERIVED FROM LEPROSY OR CONTACT WITH LEPERS AND LEPROUS THINGS (chapters 13, 14). A third cause of uncleanness is found in a third class of offensive or repulsive objects. There is no disease which produces so foul an appearance in the human form as leprosy. There was, therefore, no disease so suitable for creating ceremonial, because representing spiritual, uncleanness.
The name leprosy has been made to cover a number of diseases similar but not identical in character. There are many spurious forms of leprosy, and many diseases akin to leprosy which do not now come under discussion. The disease here dealt with is elephantiasis, especially in its anesthetic form, which is otherwise called white leprosy. The two varieties of elephantiasis the tuberculated and the anesthetic are, however, so closely connected together that they cannot be separated, the one. often running into the other. The first symptom of the malady is a painless spot, which covers an indolent ulcer. This ulcer may continue unprogressive for months or for years, during which the person affected is able to do his ordinary business; but at the end of these periods, whether longer or shorter, it produces a more repulsive and foul disfigurement of the human face and frame than any known disease, the features of the face changing their character, and part of the body occasionally mortifying and dropping off. Death at last comes suddenly, when a vital part of the body has been affected.
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The home of leprosy has in all ages been Syria and Egypt and the countries adjacent to them, but Europe has not escaped the scourge. In the Middle Ages, no European country was free from it; London had at one time six leper houses; cases were found not unfrequently in Scotland till the middle of the last century; and there was a death certified by medical science to have resulted from leprosy in the city of Norwich in the year 1880. The object of the regulations relating to leprosy is no more sanitary than of those relating to unclean meats. Like the latter, they may have served a sanitary purpose, for leprosy is, according to the prevailing medical opinion, slightly, though only slightly, contagious. Because leprosy was hideous and foul, it therefore made the man affected by it unclean, and before he could be restored to communion with God and his people, he must be certified by God"s priest to be delivered from the disease. As in the previous cases, physical ugliness and defilement represent spiritual depravity and viciousness. "The Levitical law concerning leprosy reveals to us the true nature of sin. It shows its hideousness and its foulness, and fills us with shame, hatred, and loathing for it. And it reveals to us the inestimable benefit which we have received from the incarnation of the Son of God, "the Sun of Righteousness, with healing in his wings"; (Mal_4:2) and fills us with joy, thankfulness, and love to him for his infinite goodness to us" (Wordsworth). Leprosy, the most loathsome of all common diseases, is the type and symbol of sin, and the ceremonial uncleanness attaching to it is a parable of the moral foulness of sin.
HOMILETICS Vers. 1-44. Leprosy is regarded as the type of sin
in a more especial way than other foul and ugly things. Affections of the body often serve as means of representing to ourselves the affections of the mind, This is witnessed to by ordinary language. The words, "see," "perceive," "feel," originally expressive of bodily acts, have come to signify mental acts, and so in other cases, "healthy," "diseased," "upright," "debased," are words which we apply to men in their moral even more than in their physical capacity. (cf. Isa_1:5, Isa_1:6, "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment Points of similarity between leprosy as it affects the body and sin as it affects the soul are
I ITS MYSTERIOUS ORIGIN. Whether by hereditary transmission or for other untraceable causes, it makes its appearance in the flesh of those whom it attacks without any special personal act of theirs to have brought it on.
II ITS SLIGHT BEGINNING. It appears to be as nothing as a mere spot in the skin, such as often comes and goes without injury.
III ITS PAINLESSNESS IN ITS FIRST STAGES. It does not interfere with the common pleasures or occupations of life. There is a spot which a keen eye may observe, but it causes no trouble, and men go on anticipating no evil from it.
IV THE SLOWNESS OF ITS GROWTH. "Sometimes months, sometimes years, even to the extent of twenty or thirty years, intervene between the first appearance of the spots and their development" (Gardiner). "Very frequently, even for years, before the actual outbreak of the disease itself, white yellowish spots are seen lying deep in the skin" (Trusen, "Krankheiten der Alter Hebr."). In other cases it develops more rapidly, according to the part of the body in which it has fixed itself, and the general health of the patient.
V ITS INSIDIOUSNESS. After it has long continued without producing mischief, the person affected recovers hope, and thinks that no harm will come of it, but the evil remains, and waits its time for exhibiting itself, hiding itself meantime and lingering in the system.
VI ITS RESISTLESS PROGRESS IF NOT ERADICATED IMMEDIATELY THAT IT APPEARS, "It is asserted that it yields to medical treatment in its earliest stages, when the spots first appear, and a number of distinct cases of cure are recorded. After the leprosy has once acquired a certain degree of development, there is no known means of cure. Everything hitherto attempted has been found to rather aggravate than mitigate the disorder. It is certain that, after it has once become developed to any considerable extent, it is incurable by any remedies at present known, although spontaneous cures do sometimes occur" (Gardiner).
VII ITS FINAL HIDEOUSNESS. First it affects the hair around the spot, and changes its colour and its character till at last it falls off. "The spots afterwards pierce through the cellular tissues and reach the muscles and bone. Hard gelatinous swellings are formed in the cellular tissue; the skin gets hard, rough, and seamy, lymph exudes from it, and forms large scabs, which fall off from time to time, and under these there are often offensive running sores. The nails then swell, curl up, and fall off, entropium is formed, with bleeding gums, the nose stopped up, and a considerable flow of saliva" (Trusen). "A characteristic of the disease is the horribly repulsive features of its later stages, when the face becomes shockingly disfigured, and often the separate joints of the body become mortified and drop off one by one" (Gardiner).
VIII THE SUFFERING ENTAILED BY IT AT LAST. AS if to make up for the painlessness of its earlier stages, it not only causes in its final stage a constant pain of body, but a distress of mind and horror on the part of the sufferer at having become so loathsome and offensive an object to himself and to others.
IX ITS UNEXPECTED ENDING. "A characteristic of the disease is its usually sudden and unexpected termination at the last, when the leprosy reaches some vital organ, and gives rise to secondary disease, often dysentery, by which life is ended" (Gardiner). "The patient gets thin and weak, diarrhea sets in, and incessant thirst and. burning fever terminate his sufferings" (Trusen).
X ITS LIKENESS TO A LIVING DEATH. "Leprosy was not merely the emblem of sin, but of death, to which, so to speak, it stood related, as does our actual sinfulness to our state of sin and death before God. A rabbinical saying ranks lepers with those who may be regarded as dead" (Edersheim), In all these respects, by the bodily state of the leper was manifested and parabolically set forth the state of the soul given up to the dominion of sin. Like leprosy, sin springs up mysteriously in the heart, owing to some previously existing, corruption; at first it does not cause pain, but it promises pleasure, and gives some enjoyment to the senses; its true character is often not developed for years, but it gradually takes more and more possession of the soul, till it becomes unconquerable by any internal or human power; then it shows itself in its true form, repulsive instead of attractive, full of pain instead of pleasure, ending in a sudden destruction and a death of the soul.
CONCLUSION.
1. Negative. Avoid those things which will bring the soul into a state analogous to the leprous body. "Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it and pass away." "For the lips of a strange woman drop as an honeycomb, and her mouth is smoother than oil: but her end is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps take hold on hell Remove thy way far from her, and come not nigh the door of her house: lest thou give thine honour unto others, and thy years unto the cruel: lest strangers be filled with thy wealth; and thy labours be in the house of a stranger; and thou mourn at the last, when thy flesh and thy body are consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof; and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined mine ear to them that instructed me!" "Let not thine heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death (Pro_4:14, 15 5:8-13 7:25-27)
2. Positive. Seek those things which" will give health and strength to the soul. Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold, Site is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour. Her ways arc ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to them that lay hold. upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her". (Pro_3:13-18)
HOMILIES BY R.M. EDGAR Chapter 13The diagnosis of sin as illustrated in the leprosy.
cf. 2Ki 5 Ps 88 Mat_8:1-4 Luk_5:12-15. The preceding chapter brings forward sin as an inheritance through ordinary generation. No thorough sense or treatment of sin can be reached unless it is recognized as a nature. But God went further in his education of his people. He took one disease with unmistakable characteristics; he legislated about it, doomed the possessor of it to a certain treatment, and so made plain to all his attitude towards sin.
The case of Naaman (2Ki 5) demonstrates that leprosy was not treated in Syria as it was among the Jews. Though a leper, he could enjoy the society of his family, wait upon his king, and command the spray. The disease entailed no penalties at Damascus such as existed in Samaria. No sanitary solution, therefore, of this Mosaic law will satisfy the conditions; we must look to moral and spiritual considerations for the solution. Hence we are constrained to start with the canon of interpretation that leprosy was a disease selected for treatment among the Jews to illustrate the treatment of sin.
I AS SOON AS THE DISEASE IS SUSPECTED, THE PERSON IS TO GO, OR BE BROUGHT, NOT TO A PHYSICIAN, BUT TO ONE OF THE PRIESTS. This took it out of the category of diseases curable by ordinary means. Hence the term for "leprosy" (trx, from rx, to strike down) signifies "the stroke of God." It was deemed a Divine infliction, which, if not divinely cured, would terminate fatally, and, though not disseminated by contact, was transmissible from parent to child. In handing it over in such circumstances for religious treatment, there was afforded one of the most striking illustrations of the nature of sin. Sin is a disease which none but the Divine Physician can cure. All effort at self-cure, all effort after merely human cure, is unavailing. Of course, sinners are induced to believe in the curability of the incurable, else there would be no sale for many a "patent medicine," and no opening for many a spiritual imposture. But God has made it sufficiently plain, by statement and illustration, that sin is a disease with which only he himself can deal. Hence he handed its symbol, the leprosy, to a priest, and not to a physician.
II THE PRIEST, IN INVESTIGATING THE DISEASE, IS TO ASCERTAIN. WHETHER IT IS SUPERFICIAL OR VITAL. It may be only a "scab" or a "burning boil," a mere superficial eruption, in which case the priest is to comfort the patient with the assurance that he is clean. But if the disease is seen to go down into the vitals of the patient, to be deep and hidden, then the priest is to pronounce him unclean.
For sin is no superficial matter, but a vital and fatal evil. It eats below the appearances into the very vitals of the being, and, unless divinely checked, must run its fatal course,
III THE PENALTY OF PRONOUNCED LEPROSY, IS A LIVING DEATH, AND A CONSEQUENT EXCLUSION FROM THE CAMP OF GOD. "The leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean. All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be" (verses 45, 46). It is instructive to analyze this sentence. And
1. The leper was to regard himself as virtually a dead man. This is implied by the rent clothes and the bare head, the signs of Oriental mourning, He was to be his own chief mourner. The same idea was carried out in the Middle Ages, when the mass for the dead was said over the leper. Longfellow refers to this in his "Golden Legend," when he says of Prince Henry"Why, in Saint Rochus They made him stand, and wait his doom: And, as if he were condemned to the tomb, Began to mutter their hocus-pocus. First, the mass for the dead they chanted, Then three times laid upon his head A shovelful of churchyard clay, Saying to him, as he stood undaunted. "This is a sign that thou art dead; So in thy heart be penitent! " And forth from the chapel door he went Into disgrace and banishment, Clothed in a cloak of hodden gray, And bearing a wallet, and a bell, Whose sound should be a perpetual knell To keep all travellers away.
In the leper we have, therefore, the finest possible illustration of what spiritual death is. It is not a state of unconsciousness, but a state of consciousness. A sense of hopeless doom goes to make up this living death. Here have we vividly presented what "dead in trespasses and sins" must mean.
2. The leper was to cry out as he met a passenger, "Unclean, unclean! That is, he was to encourage the consciousness of personal uncleanness. In no way could a penitent spirit be more powerfully, illustrated. A perpetual humiliation was thus kept up, a sense of vileness and uncleanness, which is wholesome for the soul. Doubtless the sense of uncleanness might be impenitent; the poor leper might regard himself as a victim of providence instead of one deserving the stroke. But his cry is a very vivid representation of what humiliation for sin should be.
3. The leper must isolate himself from the society of the pure, and dwell without the comp. Isolation is what the leper is required to enter, and what we may be sure he does enter willingly. To a doomed man like him, contact with the clean and pure would be painful. Isolation would be easier to bear than society. So is it with sin. It is an isolating, repellent power. The sinner would not choose the society of the holy. Heaven would be a more painful place for a sinful soul than Gehenna itself. Hence we find in Roy. 21. that while the new Jerusalem is to have nothing that defileth within it, no precaution to ensure this is needed; the gates remain open, for sinners would not, even if they could, court the society of the holy.
The isolating power of sin may be illustrated from the case of Byron. Two quotations are worth giving in this connection.
"I loved but those I loved are gone; Had friends my early friends are fled. How cheerless feels the heart alone, When all its former hopes are dead! Though gay companions e"er the bowl Dispel awhile the sense of ill; Though pleasure stirs the maddening soul, The heart the heart is lonely still.
And again in the stanzas written at Missolonghi when he was thirty-six
"My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone: The worm, the canker, and the grief Are mine alone! "The fire that on my bosom preys Is lone as some volcanic isle; No torch is kindled at its blaze A funeral pile.
Was it not to taste the full consequences of human sin that our Lord had to enter the desolation which constrained the cry on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
IV ON THE OTHER HAND, THE PRIEST IS DIRECTED HOW HE MAY ASCERTAIN WHEN THE LEPROSY HAS BEEN CURED. For this direction contemplates cases of cure, where "the stroke of God" in the leprosy has been followed up by the mercy of God in removing it, Now, one general principle runs through the cases of cure. If the priest has evidence that the disease has all come to the surface, then he is to pronounce the leper clean. The spiritual counterpart of this is not far to seek. If sin be hidden, if the sinner, like the Psalmist, keep silence about it, then his bones wax old through his roaring all the day long, and his moisture is turned into the drought of summer. (Psa_32:3, Psa_32:4) But if the sinner confesses his sin, acknowledges all he knows, and that there is much besides known only to the Lord in a word, if the sinner makes "a clean breast" of everything, then is the cure of God in process of accomplishment. The lesson here is consequently the great desirability of a full and heartfelt confession of sin. There is hope of a man when he hides nothing from the Lord.
V MAN SHOULD BE.AS CAREFUL ABOUT HIS ENVIRONMENT AS ABOUT HIMSELF. It is evident from the possibility of leprosy infecting garments, and even houses, that the disease was contemplated as having a much wider range than the person of the leper. The directions given to the priest, moreover, contemplate the purification of man"s surroundings. Every effort is to be made to stamp out the plague. The pure or purified are to be surrounded by the pure,
Now, this conveys the spiritual lesson surely of man taking the utmost pains to have a pure atmosphere, so to speak, in which to cultivate purity of life. Wherever sin is allowed free play, it will extend its ravages to man"s environment. The world itself is a different world through man"s sin. The duty of God"s people in this case is plain. "The very appearance of evil" must be avoided. (1Th_5:22) We must carefully keep ourselves unspotted from the world. (Jam_1:27) Whenever we find sin tempting us, we must, if possible, have it removed and consumed. Does it meet us in literature? let us avoid it, and, if possible, destroy it. And even the ravages of sin in the world itself must be contemplated in the hope of having them one day completely removed. Let sin be slain in the light of day is the great practical lesson of this chapter. R.M.E.
HOMILIES BY J.A. MACDONALD Vers. 1-59. Leprosy.
That leprosy is a type of sin is evident from David"s allusion in confessing his own horrible offenses? (see Psa_51:7) This also appears from the words of Jesus to the only leper, out of the ten cleansed by him, who returned to give glory to God: "Thy faith hath saved thee". (see Luk_17:11-19) The others had faith which availed them to remove the leprosy of the body; but this man"s faith availed to remove the leprosy of the soul. Hence this plague often came as a judgment from Heaven upon sin, (see Num_12:10 2Ki_5:27 2Ch_26:19) from which circumstance, perhaps, it had its name (trx), tsaraath, from (rx), tsaro, to smite. As there is no disease whose description engages so much space in Scripture, leprosy must be regarded as a very special type of sin.
I IT IS A PLAGUE MOST LOATHSOME.
1. So it is described.
(1) According to Scripture it appeared in a "rising," or "scab," or "bright spot" (verse 2). From one or more of these centers it "spread" (verses 8, 12, 22, 36), exhibiting "quick raw flesh" (verses 10, 15), and this as it dried turned to a white scurf (verse 13). Job is, by some, supposed to have been afflicted with leprosy. (see Job_7:5)
(2) Travellers give frightful accounts of it. Maundrell describes it as he witnessed it in Palestine, and states it to be "the utmost corruption of the human body at this side the grave.
2. Is not this a true picture of sin?
(1) View it in the haunts of the "criminal classes." What spectacles are witnessed in police courts! what distortion of features, what mutilations, the humanity almost battered out of them through the violences of dissipation!
(2) No less loathsome to the eye of God are the hearts of many who outwardly seem respectable. (Jer_17:9) Sin is called "corruption," and seducers to sin "corrupters". (Eph_4:22 2Pe_2:19) Learn to loathe sin.
II IT IS A DISEASE DEEPLY SEATED.
1. Surface evils may be mistaken for sin.
(1) When symptoms go no deeper than the skin, they are no proof of leprosy (verses 4, 34). Errors of judgment sometimes arc mistaken for sins. Sincere Christians should be careful not to condemn themselves when God does not condemn them.
(2) Surface evils may be very painful, There were "burning boils," which did not compromise the cleanness of the sufferer (verses 23, 28). So may we smart under reproaches and scandals raised by the malignity of enemies, and perhaps sometimes through our own unwisdom, which God will not impute to us for sin.
2. When the evil is in the flesh there is uncleanness.
(1) This was a capital test of leprosy (verses 3, 20, 30). This disease may be handed down from father to son. (see 2Ki_5:27) So sin is "that which cometh out of the heart", (Mat_15:18-20 1Co_8:7 Tit_1:15 Heb_12:15, Heb_12:16) Like its type, sin also is hereditary. (Rom_5:12)
(2) Mental rebellion against God is of the worse kind. Hence the emphasis with which the uncleanness of the leper is pronounced whose leprosy is in his head (see verses 43, 44). Satan is intellect without God. Keep a pure faith and it will keep you.
III IT IS A MALADY FEARFULLY CONTAGIOUS.
1. Such was the figure.
(1) Leprosy works secretly at first, and for years may be concealed. Its early appearance may be limited to a pimple; but so rapidly does it spread that "seven days" may be sufficient for it to become pronounced (verses 22, 27, 36),
(2) It may pass from the leper to his neighbor. Robinson says, "That it was contagious, all histories, sacred and profane, agree" ("Theological Dictionary"). It was therefore necessary to provide that lepers should dwell apart. (verse 46; Num_12:15 1Ch_27:21)
(3) Property as well as persons caught the plague. Garments had to be destroyed for it (verse 52). Houses also. (Lev_14:45)
2. The reality answers to the figure,
(1) Sin in the individual gathers strength by habit, and infects the faculties until the heart is sick, the head faint, and the whole man is a mass of moral putrescence. (Isa_1:6)
(2) By precept and example he demoralizes his neighbours, and brings down the judgments of Heaven upon them. (Jos_7:1, Jos_7:11, 12 Ecc_9:18)
(3) The plague of sin affects the material prosperity of individuals and of nations. No wonder the leper should be accounted ceremonially unclean, and the sinner avoided by the holy universe. J.A.M.
Vers. 1-59. The priest"s adjudication.
We have considered the plague of leprosy as an emblem of sin; the adjudication upon it will suggest thoughts concerning the treatment of sin. In this business the principal actor was the priest, who must be viewed as the type of Christ. The judgment in this case will be disciplinary rather than final; for when Messiah will come to judge the world at the last day, he will appear not as a priest but as a king. We are now concerned with the functions of the priest.
I HE HAD TO EXAMINE THE SUSPECTED PERSON.
1. In this he proceeded according to the Law.
(1) He had his rules for determining the presence of the plague.
(2) So by the Word of God is our moral cleanness or uncleanness to be determined. (Rom_2:13 Rom_3:20 1Co_14:24, 25 Jam_1:22-25 Jam_2:9)
(3) Conviction is carried home by the Spirit of Christ.
2. When the case was dubious judgment was deferred.
(1) Meanwhile the suspected person was "shut up" (verses 4, 21, 31) that opportunity might be given for the manifestation of the symptoms. So are sinners "shut up" by the Law to the faith of the gospel. (see Rom_11:32, margin; Gal_3:23)
(2) At the end of "seven days" judgment was given; or, if the symptoms were not then sufficiently manifest, a second period of seven days was allowed, which was the final term. Could these periods refer to the dispensations of our probation? In this case the leper must be taken to personate a class of sinner according to the type of his disease, whether proceeding from the "rising," or the "boil," or the "scab." In any case, a sufficient probation is given us in this world for the manifestation of our real character, which probation we should be careful to improve.
3. A leprous garment was treated as representing its owner.
(1) It had to be inspected by the priest for his judgment and sentence, as though it had been a person. In case the plague in it were not pronounced, it had to be "shut up" and examined again after the same intervals of" seven days" (verses 50, 54). The expense and trouble of this, particularly if it had to be brought from a distance, would be as much as the garment was worth, so that the Law is unaccountable unless it was intended to serve a typical purpose.
(2) Agabus the prophet made Paul"s girdle emblematically to represent that apostle. (Act_21:11) The "owner" of a leprous house, obviously for the same reason, had to "come and tell the priest". (Lev_14:35)
(3) The washing of the garment in this case suggests the washing of regeneration.
II HE HAD TO PRONOUNCE UPON HIM.
1. In some cases the verdict was an acquittal.
(1) If the suspected leprosy proved to be but a surface evil, the subject was pronounced clean (verse 6). Jesus does not mark as sins infirmities which spring not from an evil nature. The person acquitted, however, had to wash his clothes (verse 34). There is no person so faultless as not to need the laver of regeneration.
(2) If a leper be "white all over," no proud flesh, no ichor, being visible, he is pronounced clean (verse 13). The virulence of the disease is over; God"s mercy has reached him; the sinner is forgiven. But the marks of an old dissipation often remain after forgiveness. Though now clean, there can be no question that he had been a leper.
(3) Another case is given. A leper, supposing his disease gone, presents himself to the priest for his cleansing; but the priest, discovering "raw flesh," sends him away unclean; in time, however, he becomes cured, returns to the priest, and on the second application is pronounced clean (verse 17). This case is like that of the sinner whose repentance is not perfect, and at the altar he discovers that until he is reconciled to a brother whom he had wronged his gift cannot be accepted; the reconciliation made, he returns and finds the favour of God. (Mat_5:23, Mat_5:24)
2. In other cases the judgment was "Unclean.
(1) When the plague is pronounced, as in cases of "old leprosy," deliberation was unnecessary; judgment came speedily (verses 10, 11). So with the openly wicked. (Psa_9:16 Pro_5:22 Pro_11:5)
(2) In all cases evidence must be clear. Time, therefore, was given for the plague to pronounce itself. So, before judgment could overtake the Amorites, their iniquity must be full. (Gen_15:16; see also Dan_8:23 Mat_23:32, 33 1Th_2:16)
(3) Jesus is unerring in his judgments. He is the faithful as well as merciful High Priest.
3. The sentence.
(1) The leper has to dwell without the camp (verse 46). So must the open sinner be put out of the Church. (see 1Co_5:11-13) Hypocrites and unbelievers, though in the Church in the visible part, are not recognized by God as members of the Church in the spiritual part.
(2) The leper has to behave as an excommunicate seeking for the mercy of God. His clothes are rent to express extreme grief and sorrow. His head is bare, turbanless, to express deep humiliation. He put a covering upon his upper lip; had his jaw tied up with a linen cloth as a corpse, to express his state as that of a living death, (see 2Ki_5:7 Eze_24:17) and he was to cry "Unclean!" (verse 45). When we confess that we are dead in trespasses and sins, and sorrow to repentance, there is hope for us in God.
(3) But as the garment that remains unclean after two washings, to save it from destruction must have the leprous piece rent from it; so if a "right hand" or "right eye" prevent us from realizing the benefits of redemption, they must be separated (verse 56). But if all efforts to save the garment fail, then its doom is to be burnt. J.A.M. (see Mat_5:29, 30 18:8, 9)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain THE interpretation of this chapter presents no little difficulty.…
THE UNCLEANNESS OF LEPROSY
Lev_13:1-46
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THE interpretation of this chapter presents no little difficulty. The description of the diseases with which the law here deals is not given in a scientific form; the point of view, as the purpose of all, is strictly practical. As for the Hebrew word rendered "leprosy," it does not itself give any light as to the nature of the disease thus designated. The word simply means "a stroke," as also does the generic term used in Lev_13:2 and elsewhere, and translated "plague." Inasmuch as the Septuagint translators rendered the former term by the Greek word "lepra" (whence our word "leprosy"), and as, it is said, the old Greek physicians comprehended under that term only such scaly cutaneous eruptions as are now known as psoriasis (vulg., "saltrheum"), and for what is now known as leprosy reserved the term "elephantiasis," it has been therefore urged by high authority that in these chapters is no reference to the leprosy of modern speech, but only to some disease or diseases much less serious, either psoriasis or some other, consisting, like that, of a scaly eruption on the skin. To the above argument it is also added that the signs which are given for the recognition of the disease intended, are not such as we should expect if it were the modern leprosy; as, for example, there is no mention of the insensibility of the skin, which is so characteristic a feature of the disease, at least, in a very common variety; moreover, we find in this chapter no allusion to the hideous mutilation which so commonly results from leprosy.
When the use of the Hebrew term rendered "leprosy" is examined, in this law and elsewhere, it certainly seems to be used with great definiteness to describe a disease which had as a very characteristic feature a whitening of the skin throughout, together with other marks common to the early stages of leprosy as given in this chapter. Only in Lev_13:12 does the Hebrew word appear to be applied to a disease of a different character, though also marked by the whitening of the skin. As for the symptoms indicated, the undoubted absence of many conspicuous marks of leprosy may be accounted for by the following considerations. In the first place, with a single exception (Lev_13:9-11), the earliest stages of the disease are described; and, secondly, it may reasonably be assumed that, through the desire to ensure the earliest possible separation of a leprous man from the congregation, signs were to be noted and acted upon, which might also be found in other forms of skin disease. The aim of the law is that, if possible, the man shall be removed from the camp before the disease has assumed its most unambiguous and revolting form. As for the omission to mention the insensibility of the skin of the leper, this seems to be sufficiently explained when we remember that this symptom is characteristic of only one, and that not the most fatal, variety of the disease.
But, it has also been urged, that elsewhere in the Scripture the so-called lepers appear as mingling with other people-as, for example, in the case of Naaman and Gehazi-in a way which shows that the disease was not regarded as contagious; whence it is inferred, again, that the leprosy of which we read in the Bible cannot be the same with the disease which is so called in our time. But, in reply to this objection, it may be answered that even modern medical opinion has been by no means as confident of the contagiousness of the disease-at least, until quite recently-as were people in the middle ages; nor, moreover, can we assume that the prevention of contagion must have been the chief reason for the segregation of the leper, according to the Levitical law, seeing that a like separation was enjoined in many other cases of ceremonial uncleanness where any thought of contagion or infection was quite impossible.
In further support of the more common opinion, which identifies the disease chiefly referred to in this chapter with the leprosy of modern times, the following considerations appear to be of no little weight. In the first place, the words themselves which are applied to the disease in these chapters and elsewhere, -tsaraath and nega, both meaning, etymologically, "a stroke," i.e., a stroke in some eminent sense, -while peculiarly fitting if the disease be that which we now know as leprosy, seem very strangely chosen if, as Sir Risdon Bennett thinks, they only designate varieties of a disease of so little seriousness as psoriasis. Then, again, the words used by Aaron to Moses, {Num_12:12} referring to the leprosy of Miriam, deserve great weight here: "Let her not, I pray, be as one dead, of whom the flesh is half consumed." These words sufficiently answer the allegation that there is no certain reference in Scripture to the mutilation which is so characteristic of the later stages of the disease. It would not be easy to describe in more accurate language the condition of the leper as the plague advances; while, on the other hand, if the leprosy of the Bible be only such a light affection as "salt-rheum," these words and the evident horror which they express, are so exaggerated as to be quite unaccountable.
Then, again, we cannot lose sight of the place which the disease known in Scripture language as leprosy holds in the sight of the law. As a matter of fact, it is singled out from a multitude of diseases as the object of the most stringent and severe regulations, and the most elaborate ceremonial, known to the law. Now, if the disease intended be indeed the awful elephantiasis Graecorum of modern medical science, popularly known as leprosy, this is most natural and reasonable; but if, on the other hand, only some such nonmalignant disease as psoriasis be intended, this fact is inexplicable. Further, the tenour of all references to the disease in the Scripture implies that it was deemed so incurable that its removal in any case was regarded as a special sign of the exercise of Divine power. The reference of the Hebrew maid of Naaman to the prophet of God, {2Ki_5:3} as one who could cure him, instead of proving that it was thought curable-as has been strangely urged-by ordinary means, surely proves the exact opposite. Naaman, no doubt, had exhausted medical resources; and the hope of the maid for him is not based on the medical skill of Elisha, but on the fact that he was a prophet of God, and therefore able to draw on Divine power. To the same effect is the word of the King of Israel, when he received the letter of Naaman: {2Ki_5:7} "Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send unto me to recover a man of his leprosy?" In full accord with this is the appeal of our Lord {Mat_11:5} to His cleansing of the lepers, as a sign of His Messiahship which He ranks for convincing power along with the raising of the dead.
Nor is it a fatal objection to the usual understanding of this matter, that because the Levitical law prescribes a ritual for the ceremonial cleansing of the leper in case of his cure, therefore the disease so called could not be one of the gravity and supposed incurability of the true leprosy. For it is to be noted, in the first place, that there is no intimation that recovery from the leprosy was a common occurrence, or even that it was to be expected at all, apart from the direct power of God; and, in the second place, that the Scriptural narrative represents God as now and then-though very rarely - interposing for the cure of the leper. And it may perhaps be added, thatwhile a recent authority writes, and with truth, that "medical skill appears to have been more completely foiled by this than by any other malady," it is yet remarked that, when of the anaesthetic variety, "some spontaneous cures are recorded."
The chapter before us calls for little detailed exposition. The diagnosis of the disease by the priest is treated under four different heads:
(1) the case of a leprosy rising spontaneously (vv. 1-17, 38, 39);
(2) leprosy rising out of a boil (vv. 18-24);
(3) rising out of a burn (vv. 24-28);
(4) leprosy on the head or beard (vv. 29-37, 40-44).
The indications which are to be noted are described (Lev_13:2-3, Lev_13:24-27, etc.) as a rising of the surface, a scab (or scale), or a bright spot (very characteristic), the presence in the spot of hair turned white, the disease apparently deeper than the outer or scarf skin, a reddish-white colour of the surface, and a tendency to spread. The presence of raw flesh is mentioned (Lev_13:10) as an indication of a leprosy already somewhat advanced, "an old leprosy." In cases of doubt, the suspected case is to be isolated for a period of seven or, if need be, fourteen days, at the expiration of which the priests verdict is to be given, as the symptoms may then indicate.
Two cases are mentioned which the priest is not to regard as leprosy. The first (Lev_13:12-13) is that in which the plague "covers all the skin of him that hath the plagues from his head even to his feet, as far as appeareth to the priest," so that he "is all turned white." At first thought, this seems quite unaccountablet seeing that leprosy finally affects the whole body. But the solution of the difficulty is not far to seek. For the next verse provides that, in such a case, if "raw flesh" appear, he shall be held to be unclean. The explanation of this provision of Lev_13:12 is therefore apparently this: that if an eruption had so spread as to cover the whole body, turning it white, and yet no raw flesh had appeared in any place, the disease could not be true leprosy as, if it were, then, by the time that it had so extended, "raw flesh" would certainly have appeared somewhere. The disease indicated by this exception was indeed well known to the ancients, as it is also to the moderns as the "dry tetter"; which, although an affection often of long duration, frequently disappears spontaneously, and is never malignant.
The second case which is specified as not to be mistaken for leprosy is mentioned in Lev_13:38-39, where it is described as marked by bright spots of a dull whiteness, but without the white hair, and other characteristic signs of leprosy. The Hebrew word by which it is designated is rendered in the Revised Version "tetter"; and the disease, a nonmalignant tetter or eczema, is still known in the East under the same name (bohak) which is here used.
Lev_13:45-46 give the law for him who has been by the priest adjudged to be a leper. He must go with clothes rent, with his hair neglected, his lip covered, crying, "Unclean! unclean!" without the camp, and there abide alone for so long as he continues to be afflicted with the disease. In other words, he is to assume all the ordinary signs of mourning for the dead; he is to regard himself, and all others are to regard him, as a dead man. As it were, he is a continual mourner at his own funeral.
Wherein lay the reason for this law? One might answer, in general, that the extreme loathsomeness of the disease, which made the presence of those who had it to be abhorrent, even to their nearest friends, would of itself make it only fitting, however distressing might be the necessity, that such persons should be excluded from every possibility of appearing, in their revolting corruption, in the sacred and pure precincts of the tabernacle of the holy God, as also from mingling with His people. Many, however, have seen in the regulation only a wise law of public hygiene. That a sanitary intent may very probably have been included in the purpose of this law, we are by no means inclined to deny. In earlier times, and all through the middle ages, the disease was regarded as contagious; and lepers were accordingly segregated, as far as practicable, from the people. In modern times, the weight of opinion until recent years has been against this older view; but the tendency of medical authority now appears to be to reaffirm the older belief. The alarming increase of this horrible disease in all parts of the world, of late, following upon a general relaxation of those precautions against contagion which were formerly thought necessary, certainly supports this judgment; and it may thus be easily believed that there was just sanitary ground for the rigid regulations of the Mosaic code. And just here it may be remarked, that if indeed there be any degree of contagiousness, however small, in this plague, no one who has ever seen the disease, or understands anything of its incomparable horror and loathsomeness, will feel that there is any force in the objections which have been taken to this part of the Mosaic law as of inhuman harshness toward the sufferers. Even were the risk of contagion but small, as it probably is, still, so terrible is the disease that one would more justly say that the only inhumanity were to allow those afflicted with it unrestricted intercourse with their fellow men. The truth is, that the Mosaic law concerning the treatment of the leper, when compared with regulations touching lepers which have prevailed among other nations, stands contrasted with them by its comparative leniency. The Hindoo law, as is well known, even insists that the leper ought to put himself out of existence, requiring that he shall be buried alive.
But if there be included in these regulations a sanitary intent, this certainly does not exhaust their significance. Rather, if this be admitted, it only furnishes the basis, as in the case of the laws concerning clean and unclean meats, for still more profound spiritual teaching. For, as remarked before, it is one of the fundamental thoughts of the Mosaic law, that death, as being the extreme visible manifestation of the presence of sin in the race, and a sign of the consequent holy wrath of God against sinful man, is inseparably connected with legal uncleanness. But all disease is a forerunner of death, an incipient dying; and is thus, no less really than actual death, a visible manifestation of the presence and power of sin working in the body through death. And yet it is easy to see that it would have been quite impracticable to carry out a law that therefore all disease should render the sick person ceremonially unclean; while, on the other hand, it was of consequence that Israel, and we as well, should be kept in remembrance of this connection between sin and disease, as death beginning. What could have been more fitting, then, than this, that the one disease which, without exaggeration, is of all diseases the most loathsome, which is most manifestly a visible representation of that which is in a measure true of all disease, that it is death working in life, that disease which is, not in a merely rhetorical sense, but in fact, a living image of death, -should be selected from all others for the illustration of this principle: to be to Israel and to us, a visible, perpetual, and very awful parable of the nature and the working of sin?
And this is precisely what has been done. This explains, as sanitary considerations alone do not, not merely the separation of the leper from the holy people, but also the solemn symbolism which required him to assume the appearance of one mourning for the dead; as also the symbolism of his cleansing, which, in like manner, corresponded very closely with that of the ritual of cleansing from defilement by the dead. Hence, while all sickness, in a general way, is regarded in the Holy Scriptures as a fitting symbol of sin, it has always been recognised that, among all diseases, leprosy is this in an exceptional and preeeminent sense. This thought seems to have been in the mind of David, when, after his murder of Uriah and adultery with Bathsheba, bewailing his iniquity, {Psa_51:7} he prayed, "Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean." For the only use of the hyssop in the law, which could be alluded to in these words is that which is enjoined {Lev_14:4-7} in the law for the cleansing of the leper, by the sprinkling of the man to be cleansed with blood and water with a hyssop branch.
And thus we find that, again, this elaborate ceremonial contains, not merely an instructive lesson in public sanitation, and practical suggestions in hygiene for our modern times; but also lessons, far more profound and momentous, concerning that spiritual malady with which the whole human race is burdened, -lessons therefore of the gravest personal consequence for every one of us.
From among all diseases, leprosy has been selected by the Holy Ghost to stand in the law as the supreme type of sin, as seen by God! This is the very solemn fact which is brought before us in this chapter. Let us well consider it and see that we receive the lesson, however humiliating and painful, in the spirit of meekness and penitence. Let us so study it that we shall with great earnestness and true faith resort to the true and heavenly High Priest, who alone can cleanse us of this sore malady. And in order to this, we must carefully consider what is involved in this type.
In the first place, leprosy is undoubtedly selected to be a special type of sin, on account of its extreme loathsomeness. Beginning, indeed, as an insignificant spot, "a bright place," a mere scale on the skin, it goes on spreading, progressing ever from worse to worse, till at last limb drops from limb, and only the hideous mutilated remnant of what was once a man is left. A vivid picture of the horrible reality has been given by that veteran missionary and very accurate observer, the Rev. William Thomson, D.D., who writes thus: "As I was approaching Jerusalem, I was startled by the sudden apparition of a crowd of beggars, sans eyes, sans nose, sans hair, sans everything They held up their handless arms, unearthly sounds gurgled through throats without palates, -in a word, I was horrified." Too horrible is this to be repeated or thought of? Yes! But then all the more solemnly instructive is it that the Holy Spirit should have chosen this disease, the most loathsome of all, as the most fatal of all, to symbolise to us the true nature of that spiritual malady which affects us all, as it is seen by the omniscient and most holy God.
But it will very naturally be rejoined by some: Surely it were gross exaggeration to apply this horrible symbolism to the case of many who, although indeed sinners, unbelievers also in Christ, yet certainly exhibit truly lovely and attractive characters. That this is true regarding many who, according to the Scriptures, are yet unsaved, cannot be denied. We read of one such in the Gospel, -a young man, unsaved, who yet was such that "Jesus looking upon him loved him." {Mar_10:20} But this fact only makes the leprosy the more fitting symbol of sin. For another characteristic of the disease is its insignificant and often even imperceptible beginning. We are told that in the case of those who inherit the taint, it frequently remains quite dormant in early life, only gradually appearing in later years.
How perfectly the type, in this respect, then, symbolises sin! And surely any thoughtful man will confess that this fact makes the presence of the infection not less alarming, but more so. No comfort then can be rightly had from any complacent comparison of our own characters with those of many, perhaps professing more, who are much worse than we, as the manner of some is. No one who knew that from his parents he had inherited the leprous taint, or in whom the leprosy as yet appeared as only an insignificant bright spot, would comfort himself greatly by the observation that other lepers were much worse; and that he was, as yet, fair and goodly to look upon. Though the leprosy were in him but just begun, that would be enough to fill him with dismay and consternation. So should it be with regard to sin.
And it would so affect such a man the more surely, when he knew that the disease, however slight in its beginnings, was certainly progressive. This is one of the unfailing marks of the disease. It may progress slowly, but it progresses surely. To quote again the vivid and truthful description of the above-named writer,
"It comes on by degrees in different parts of the body: the hair fails from the head and eyebrows; the nails loosen, decay, and drop off; joint after joint of the fingers and toes shrinks up and slowly falls away; the gums are absorbed, and the teeth disappear; the nose, the eyes, the tongue, and the palate are slowly consumed; and, finally, the wretched victim sinks into the earth and disappears."
In this respect again the fitness of the disease to stand as an eminent type of sin is undeniable. No man can morally stand still. No one has ever retained the innocence of childhood. Except as counteracted by the efficient grace of the Holy Spirit in the heart, the Word {2Ti_3:13} is ever visibly fulfilled, "evil men wax worse and worse." Sin may not develop in all with equal rapidity, but it does progress in every natural man, outwardly or inwardly, with equal certainty.
It is another mark of leprosy that sooner or later it affects the whole man; and in this, again, appears the sad fitness of the disease to stand as a symbol of sin. For sin is not a partial disorder, affecting only one class of faculties, or one part of our nature. It disorders the judgment; it obscures our moral perceptions; it either perverts the affections, or unduly stimulates them in one direction, while it deadens them in another; it hardens and quickens the will for evil, while it paralyses its power for the volition of that which is holy. And not only the Holy Scripture, but observation itself, teaches us that sin, in many cases, also affects the body of man, weakening its powers, and bringing in, by an inexorable taw, pain, disease, and death. Sooner or later, then, sin affects the whole man. And for that reason, again, is leprosy set forth as its preeeminent symbol.
It is another remarkable feature of the disease that, as it progresses from bad to worse, the victim becomes more and more insensible. This numbness or insensibility of the spots affected-in one most common variety at least-is a constant feature. In some cases it becomes so extreme that a knife may be thrust into the affected limb, or the diseased flesh may be burnt with fire, and yet the leper feels no pain. Nor is the insensibility confined to the body, but, as the leprosy extends, the mind is affected in an analogous manner. A recent writer says: "Though a mass of bodily corruption, at last unable to leave his bed, the leper seems happy and contented with his sad condition." Is anything more characteristic than this of the malady of sin? The sin which, when first committed, costs a keen pang, afterward, when frequently repeated, hurts not the conscience at all. Judgments and mercies, which in earlier life affected one with profound emotion, in later life leave the impenitent sinner as unmoved as they found him. Hence we all recognise the fitness of the common expression, "a seared conscience," as also of the Apostles description of advanced sinners as men who are "past feeling". {Eph_4:19} Of this moral insensibility which sin produces, then, we are impressively reminded when the Holy Spirit in the Word holds before us leprosy as a type of sin.
Another element of the solemn fitness of the type is found in the persistently hereditary nature of leprosy. It may indeed sometimes arise of itself, even as did sin in the case of certain of the holy angels, and with our first parents; but when once it is introduced, in the case of any person, the terrible infection descends with unfailing certainty to all his descendants; and while, by suitable hygiene, it is possible to alleviate its violence, and retard its development, it is not possible to escape the terrible inheritance. Is anything more uniformly characteristic of sin? We may raise no end of metaphysical difficulties about the matter, and put unanswerable questions about freedom and responsibility; but there is no denying the hard fact that since sin first entered the race, in our first parents, not a child of man, of human father begotten, has escaped the taint. If various external influences, as in the case of leprosy, may, in some instances, modify its manifestations, yet no individual, in any class or condition of mankind, escapes the taint. The most cultivated and the most barbarous alike, come into the world so constituted that, quite antecedent to any act of free choice on their part, we know that it is not more certain that they will eat than that, when they begin to exercise freedom, they will, each and every one, use their moral freedom wrongly, -in a word, will sin. No doubt, then, when such prominence is given to leprosy among diseases, in the Mosaic symbolism and elsewhere, it is with intent, among other truths, to keep before the mind this very solemn and awful fact with regard to the sin which it so fitly symbolises.
And, again, we find yet another analogy in the fact that, among the ancient Hebrews, the disease was regarded as incurable by human means; and, notwithstanding occasional announcements in our day that a remedy has been discovered for the plague, this seems to be the verdict of the best authorities in medical science still. That in this respect leprosy perfectly represents the sorer malady of the soul, everyone is witness. No possible effort of will or fixedness of determination has ever availed to free a man from sin. Even the saintliest Christian has often to confess with the Apostle, {Rom_7:19} "The evil which I would not, that I practise." Neither is culture, whether intellectual or religious, of any more avail. To this all human history testifies. In our day despite the sad lessons of long experience, many are hoping for much from improved government, education, and such like means; but vainly, and in the face of the most patent facts. Legislation may indeed impose restrictions on the more flagrant forms of sin, even as it may be of service in restricting the devastations of leprosy, and ameliorating the condition of lepers. But to do away with sin, and abolish crime by any conceivable legislation, is a dream as vain as were the hope of curing leprosy by a good law or an imperial proclamation. Even the perfect law of God has proved inadequate for this end; the Apostle {Rom_8:3} reminds us that in this it has failed, and could not but fail, "in that it was weak through the flesh." Nothing can well be of more importance than that We should be keenly alive to this fact; that so we may not, through our present apparently tolerable condition, or by temporary alleviations of the trouble, be thrown off our guard, and hope for ourselves or for the world, upon grounds which afford no just reason for hope.
Last of all, the law of leprosy, as given in this chapter, teaches the supreme lesson, that as with the symbolic disease of the body so with that of the soul, sin shuts out from God and from the fellowship of the holy. As the leper was excluded from the camp of Israel and from the tabernacle of Jehovah, so must the sinner, except cleansed, be shut out of the Holy City, and from the glory of the heavenly temple. What a solemnly significant parable is this exclusion of the leper from the camp! He is thrust forth from the congregation of Israel, wearing the insignia of mourning for the dead! Within the camp, the multitude of them that go to the sanctuary of God, and that joyfully keep holy day; without, the leper dwelling alone, in his incurable corruption and never-ending mourning! And so, while we do not indeed deny a sanitary intention in these regulations of the law, but are rather inclined to affirm it; yet of far more consequence is it that we heed the spiritual truth which this solemn symbolism teaches. It is that which is written in the Apocalypse {Rev_21:27; Rev_22:15} concerning the New Jerusalem: "There shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean. Without are the dogs, and the sorcerers, and the fornicators, and the murderers, and the idolaters, and everyone that loveth and maketh a lie."
In view of all these correspondences, one need not wonder that in the symbolism of the law leprosy holds the place which it does. For what other disease can be named which combines in itself, as a physical malady, so many of the most characteristic marks of the malady of the soul? In its intrinsic loathsomeness, its insignificant beginnings, its slow but inevitable progress, in the extent of its effects, in the insensibility which accompanies it, in its hereditary character, in its incurability, and, finally, in the fact that according to the law it involved the banishment of the leper from the camp of Israel, -in all these respects, it stands alone as a perfect type of sin; it is sin, as it were, made visible in the flesh.
This is indeed a dark picture of mans natural state, and very many are exceedingly loth to believe that sin can be such a very serious matter. Indeed, the fundamental postulate of much of our nineteenth-century thought, in matters both of politics and religion, denies the truth of this representation, and insists, on the contrary, that man is naturally not bad, but good; and that, on the whole, as the ages go by, he is gradually becoming better and better. But it is imperative that our views of sin and of humanity shall agree with the representations held before us in the Word of God. When that Word, not only in type, as in this chapter, but in plain language, {Jer_17:9, R.V} declares that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and it is desperately sick, " it must be a very perilous thing to deny this.
It is a profoundly instructive circumstance that, according to this typical law, the case of the supposed leper was to be judged by the priest (Lev_13:2-3, et passim). All turned for him upon the priests verdict. If he declared him clean, it was well; but if he pronounced him unclean, it made no difference that the man did not believe it, or that his friends did not believe it; or that he or they thought better in any respect of his case than the priest, -out of the camp he must go. He might plead that he was certainly not nearly in so bad a case as some of the poor, mutilated, dying creatures outside the camp; but that would have no weight, however true. For still he, no less really than they, was a leper; and, until made whole, into the fellowship of lepers he must go and abide. Even so for us all; everything turns, not on our own opinion of ourselves, or on what other men may think of us; but solely on the verdict of the heavenly Priest.
The picture thus set before us in the symbolism of this chapter is sad enough; but it would be far more sad did the law not now carry forward the symbolism into the region of redemption, in making provision for the cleansing of the leper, and his readmission into the fellowship of the holy people. To this our attention is called in the next chapter.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Leprosy: its Discobery and Treatment
Leprosy: its Discobery and Treatment
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Gathering into view the circumstantial and concise description of the malady here given; the directions concerning leprosy may be thus analysed and arranged: Symptoms of leprosy:
1. Their minuteness: small in their beginnings, trifling skin blemishes or hair defects, scarcely distinguishable at the outset, evasive therefore, and subtle.
2. Their intricacy: so resembling other ailments, in some cases rising out of other blemishes and wounds; complicate and interblending.
3. Their repulsiveness: all the descriptions are loathsome. Discrimination of the symptoms. The investigation had to be—
1. Cautious: lest that should be pronounced leprosy which was not; or that which was, be exempted.
2. Patient: the sufferer must be repeatedly examined where the signs were uncertain: no haste, no summary decision.
3. Thorough: searching to the very root: watching a wound to note its developments, shaving the hair that no symptom escape notice.
Treatment of the leper. When the malady was beyond doubt, the doom was—
1. Absolute: he was banished, there might be no concessions; he was excluded the camp.
2. Mournful: garments to be torn, the hair dishevelled, the lips covered, as for the dead.
3. Proclaimed: from the outlawed leper must rise the cry of warning to others, which was also the death knell of his own fate—“Unclean!”
Six various aspects under which leprosy may develop itself in man are here specified:
1. First appearance of the plague: the victim manifesting symptoms which excite suspicion (Lev_13:1-9.)
2. Return of the distemper (Lev_13:9-11). But two features of the malady are here exempted from the ban of uncleanness.
(1). The plague has exhausted itself upon the entire body of the sufferer (Lev_13:12-13).
(2). The plague spots have lost their virulence (Lev_13:16-17).
3. Leprosy developing from other sores or accidental wounds: seizing these blemishes in which to root itself (Lev_13:18-28).
4. The plague burying itself amid the hair: called the “dry scall” (Lev_13:29-37).
5. Harmless leprosy (Lev_13:38-39). It is still accounted harmless by the Arabs: causes no inconvenience, and lasts variously from two months to two years.
6. The baldness distemper: leading to the falling off of the hair from the back of the head (Lev_13:40-44).
Lev_13:45-46.—The leper in whom the plague is, etc. As the victim of a grievous calamity the poor leper must assume the melancholy aspects of mourning, he must tell out his woe in the doleful cry “Unclean,” and his doom must be to wander as an outcast from the society of Israel and from the sanctuary of God. This foul distemper has always been a parable of the loathsomeness of sin, and its dismal punishment vividly pourtrays the grievous penalties of moral and spiritual defilement—“a castaway.”
Lev_13:47-59.—The garment also that the plague of leprosy is in, etc. Equal minuteness of inspection, discrimination of taint were to be exercised upon garments affected with the plague, and if judged to be really contagious they were to be burned. Clothes were scarce, and not easily to be replaced in the desert, hence care that nothing be needlessly destroyed. But no unclean thing, nor “anything that defileth” could be allowed to abide within the camp. Evil must be rooted from our own persons, or we become outcasts; and evil must be shunned, contact therewith be scrupulously avoided, or the malady may return. Therefore, like leprous garments, we must “lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us.” Within the fellowship of the redeemed Church on earth, and amid the blessedness of the ransomed society of heaven, God will allow no place for any unclean thing, “neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie, but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Rev_21:27).
SECTIONAL HOMILIES
Topic: MAN PHYSICALLY A VICTIM OF CRUEL MALADIES
How appalling this picture of physical misery! To what sickening and wearying distempers has the human frame become a prey! How humiliating to contemplate
“the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to!”
I. Fashioned after the divine image, HOW GRACEFUL AND DIGNIFIED IS THE HUMAN FORM!
Moving among all products of God’s creating skill, man is His “noblest work.”
1. As a tenement of the mind and spirit, the body is endowed with a natural comeliness.
It is no unfit abode for the higher nature within. Physically we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” Mark its symmetry, its erectness, its agility. Well says Hamlet, “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!”
2. As an intrustment of the mind and spirit, the body possesses finest aptitudes. Its motions, its senses, its abilities, afford admirable outlets for the impulses and aims of the inner being. The eyes for vision, the lips for speech, the hands for ministry and work, the limbs for movement—the physical form is a thing of marvellous suitableness to the necessities of intellectual life and spiritual sympathies. It is in itself no grim prison, no harsh machine, but a supple instrument, ready to all the requirements of the indwelling soul.
II. Assailed by foul diseases, HOW DESECRATED AND PITIABLE IS THE HUMAN FORM!
Look upon the mighty fallen! writhing in anguish, wasted by disease, distorted by maladies!
1. In bodily diseases we mark the traces of calamitous experiences having befallen man.
As in the geological strata the torn and disordered upheavals declare that violence has wrought harm, so in the sufferings and maladies of the human frame. Some dire disaster has come upon the serene world of human life. Diseases are evidences of ruinous activities having invaded man’s history. God made his noble creature for something better than to be the victim of sufferings and maladies. A foul hand has been laid upon his beauteous form. “An enemy hath done this.” Sin has done dire work. Every pang, disorder, disease, is therefore a warning cry against sin which brought death into the world and all our woes.
2. In our physical maladies we may note the inducements to watchfulness and virtue.
If diseases point to a historic disaster in man’s career—his fall through sin, they also quicken man to carefulness against repeating the follies and vices which engender physical maladies. They are a call—Beware! It is not altogether a melancholy fact that illnesses and sufferings assail us, if they warn us from indulgences end defilements which develop physical misery. The evil heart of man would urge him to unlimited vices if this penalty did not confront and restrain him.
“Just disease to luxury succeeds,
And every death its own avenger breeds” (Pope).
3 Amid all distresses of the body there are ameliorations and consolations offered in religion.
(1) A patient and devout spirit may “draw honey out of the rock,” and find solace in anguish; for those who love God have had to testify, “It was good for me to be afflicted.”
“Affliction is not sent in vain
From that good God who chastens whom He loves” (Southey).
(2). In suffering also there comes the consolation of Christ to those who are His. He knew affliction in bitterest degree, and is a “brother born for adversity.”
(3). And there opens in prospect to the child of God the blissful life of heaven, where “the inhabitants never say they are sick,” etc. (Rev_21:4).
Topic: DISEASE—DEVELOPMENT—DOOM
Trace the career of the malady: it does not complete itself at a stride: it has its outset and its goal. A pestilence in the land does not expand into its fatal proportions without antecedent incitements and advancing developments. In its germinal stage the peril may have been unsuspected or ignored, but its fructification proves that active energies have long and effectively operated. Harvest fields swept by the scythe once lay bare in ploughed furrows; the seed was sown, it grew, ripened, till the reapers entered, and the garners were filled. Good and bad products alike have their history of outset, advance and fruition. In man’s physical and moral life there are equally traceable the beginnings and progressions of evil, till the fatal end is reached. No fact for contemplation in the moral realm is more melancholy than this—the progress of corruption. Consider the—
I. SUBTLE HISTORY OF ITS ORIGIN.
Transmitted; mysteriously passed on from parent to child: or acquired by contact with the leper, or things infected with leprosy
1. For awhile the distemper lies concealed in the blood, assumes no visible symptoms; is latent, passive. Thus sin long secretes itself in the nature as a subtle tendency, slumbers in the heart as a hidden taint. Whence the beginnings of evil in a human life? Came it from parentage, a moral tendency in the affections, the will, the habits? Was it imparted by early whisperings, faulty examples, harmful influences?
2. Its first appearance was in a form of uncertainty, not manifestly leprous, a swelling, a spot. Wrong when beginning in a child is not glaringly wrong, there is a something suggestive of possible deviation from right, but it is not certainly so, not manifestly and determinately so. It startles suspicion in the observer; the word, though not false, was hardly true; the secret act was scarcely deceitful, yet lacking in thorough honesty; it is scarcely a “rift in the lute”; not yet a rot on the fruit, only a “little pitted speck.”
3. Thus starting, as evil does, in a kind of incertitude, as a slight dereliction, a wavering which creates suspicion, but is not yet sufficiently pronounced to be condemned, it only needs time in order to unfold and declare itself. Leave it to work its way out, and it quickly assumes more positive forms, and it becomes too manifest that the leprosy has a firm hold on the blood, the life. [Addenda to chap. xiii. Developments.]
II. APPALLING RAPIDITY OF ITS PROGRESS.
Having gained hold on its victim, and diffused itself through the blood, the infection hastens to spread over the system. Thought of sin, suggested from without, or awaking from within, grows into desire; desire into intention: intention into act.
Vital energy decays, good resolves droop, moral force and rectitude of purpose decline; then succeed estranged affections, a defiant will, an “evil heart of unbelief,” character corrupted, till “sin reigns in our mortal body that we obey it in the lusts thereof” (Rom_6:12).
III. LOATHSOME ASPECTS OF ITS DEVELOPMENT.
Whether looked at in its incipient stage (Lev_13:2-3), or in further advance (Lev_13:7), or full outburst (Lev_13:10), or in an inflamed state (Lev_13:24), etc., it is always repulsive.
Of all forms and degrees of sin God pleads, “O do not the abominable thing which I hate!”
IV. CONTAGIOUS PROPERTIES OF THE MALADY.
One leper could spread infection through a community; all who came near him, all he touched, became contaminated.
“By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin: and so death passed upon all men.” “One sinner destroyeth much good.”
“No man liveth to himself.” One sin suggests sin to others. The contagion of evil example! The destructive influence of impurity. “Evil communications corrupt good manners.” [Addenda to chap. xiii., Transmitted Effects.]
V. FATAL TERMINATION OF THE PLAGUE.
Disease, unless arrested, soon completes its ravages; and the victim sinks to death. And what are the issues of sin? “Wages of sin is death.”
“When lust is conceived it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”
1. Outcast for his uncleanness, all his days (Lev_13:46).
2. If he “die in his sins,” rejected for evermore from the Heavenly Sanctuary and the Family of God. [Addenda to chap., Unclean].
Topic: THE LEPER BEFORE THE PRIEST (Lev_13:12-13)
“And if a leprosy break out abroad in the skin, and the leprosy cover all the skin of him that hath the plague from his head even to his foot, wheresoever the priest looketh; then the priest shall consider: and, behold, if the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague; it is all turned white; he is clean.”
This is a singular paradox, but not to him who understands the gospel. Carry in your thoughts the one key, namely, that leprosy is the type of sin; and, first of all, see the leper, and in the leper the sinner. Then bring him before the priest and watch while the priest examines him.
I. Turn your eyes to the LOATHSOME AND GHASTLY SPECTACLE OF A LEPER.
1. A leper was extremely loathsome in his person. The leprosy broke out, at first almost imperceptibly, in certain red spots which appeared in the skin. The withering of the skin followed, and was an index of what was going on within; for in the very marrow of the bones there was a most frightful rottenness, which in due time would utterly consume the victim. When it came to its very worst phase the whole house of manhood would become a horrible mass of animated rubbish rather than the stately temple which God originally made it. It is a very poor portrait of the loathsomeness of sin. When once taught of God the Holy Ghost, we see that we are vile and full of sin, that there is no good thing whatsoever in us. Loathsome as was the leper, it was not more so in the type than is sin in the estimation of every enlightened mind.
2. The leper was defiled in all his acts. If he drank out of a vessel, the vessel was defiled. If he lay upon a bed, the bed became unclean, and whosoever sat upon the bed afterwards became unclean too. If he touched but the wall of a house the wall became unclean and must be purged. Wherever he went he tainted the atmosphere; his breath was as dangerous as the pestilence. He shot baneful glances from his eyes. All that he did was full of the same loathsomeness as was himself. The actions of the “natural man” are tainted with sin. Whether he eats or drinks, or whatsoever he does, he continues to sin against his God. Nay, if he should come up to God’s house and sing and pray, there is sin in his songs, for they are but hypocrisy; there is guilt in his prayers, for the prayers of the wicked are an abomination unto the Lord. Let him attempt to perform holy actions, he is like Uzziah who laid hold upon the censer of the priest while the leprosy was on his brow, till he was glad to retire from the sacred place lest he should be struck dead. If thou dost not confess that all thy actions before thou wast regenerate were full of sin and abominable in the sight of God, thou hast not yet learned what thou art, and it is not likely that thou wilt wish to know what a Saviour is.
3. Being thus the medium of contagion and defilement wherever he went, the Lord demanded that he should be shut out from the society of Israel. There was a spot outside the camp, barren, solitary, where lepers are confined. They were commanded to wear a covering over the mouth and upon the upper lip, and if any passed by they were compelled to cry “Unclean! unclean! unclean!” Some of the Rabbi translate the cry “Avoid! avoid! avoid!” One of the American poets has put it, “Room for the leper! room!” They were required never to drink of a running stream of water of which others might drink; nor might they sit down on any stone by the roadside upon which it was probable any other person might rest. They were dead to all the enjoyments of life, dead to all the endearments and society of their friends. Such is the case with the sinner with regard to the people of God. He can go and find such mirth as the company of his fellow-lepers can afford, but where God’s people are he is out of place, shut out from the communion of saints, cannot pray their prayer nor sing their hymns, know not their joys, never taste their perfect peace, never enter into the rest which remaineth for them.
4. The leper was wholly unable to come up to the house of God. Other men might offer sacrifices but not the leper; others had a share in the great high priest’s sacrifice, and when he went within the vail he appeared for all others, but the leper had neither part nor lot in this matter. He was shut out from God as well as shut out from man. He was no partaker of the sacred things of Israel, and all the ordinances of the tabernacle were as nothing to him. Think of that, sinner! As a sinner full of guilt, thou art shut out from all communion with God. Thou canst not stand in His presence, for He is a devouring fire and would consume thee. Thy prayers are shut out from Him, thy words are unheard; shut out utterly and entirely by sin from the presence and acceptance of God.
II. NOW BRING THE LEPER UP TO THE HIGH PRIEST.
Whenever a leper was cleansed under the Jewish law the leper did nothing, the priest did all. Previous to his being pronounced clean, the leper was passive—the priest did everything. The priest comes out from the sanctuary, comes to the place of the lepers, where no other man might go but he in his priestly office. He calls up one leper before him; he looks at him and there is a spot on that leper which is not leprous—quick, raw, healthy flesh. The priest puts him aside; he is an unclean leper. Here is another, and he has but one or two red spots appearing beneath the skin, all the rest of his body is perfectly sound; the priest puts him aside, he is an unclean leper. Here is another; he is from head to foot covered with a scaly whiteness of the filthy disease, the hair is all turned white, owing to the decay of the powers of nature which are unable now to nourish the roots of the hair. There is not a single speck of health in him from the crown of his head to the soul of his foot, but all is pollution and filth. But hark! the high priest says to him, “Thou art clean.” And after certain necessary ceremonies he is admitted into the camp, and afterwards into the very sanctuary of God. “If there was found any sound place in him, he was unclean.” But when the leprosy had covered him, wheresoever the priest looked, then the man became by sacrificial rights a clean leper.
Bring up the sinner before the Great High Priest. How many there are ready to confess that they have done many things which are wrong, but they say, “Though we have done much which we cannot justify, yet there have been many good actions which might almost counterbalance the sin; been charitable to the poor, sought to instruct the ignorant, to help those that are out of the way. We have some sins we do confess; but there is much which is still right and good, and we therefore hope that we shall be delivered.” I put you aside, in God’s name, by His authority, as unclean lepers. For you there is no hope and no promise of salvation whatever. A second comes. He admits a very great measure of guilt; not open immorality, but his thoughts and the imaginations of his heart have been evil, and evil frequently. “But still,” saith he, “though I have not one good work of which to boast, nor any righteousness in which to glory, yet I do hope that by repentance I may amend; I trust that by a resolute persistence in good works I may yet blot out my past life, and so may enter heaven.” I set him aside again, as being an unclean leper, for whom cleansing rites are not provided. He is one who must still be kept without the camp; he has not arrived at that stage in which it is possible for him to be made clean. But another comes. Probably he is a really better man than either of the other two, but not in his own opinion. With many a sigh and tear he confesses that he is utterly ruined and undone. “A month or two ago I would have claimed a righteousness with the very best, could have boasted of what I have done; but now I see my righteousness to be as filthy rags, and all my goodness is as an unclean thing. I count all these things but dross and dung. I tread upon them and despise them. I have done no good thing. I have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Lord, at Thy feet I fall, full of leprosy from head to foot; nothing have I to boast of, nothing to trust to except Thy mercy.” He is a clean leper; sins forgiven, iniquities put away. Through the blood of Jesus Christ, who died upon the tree, saved! As soon as ever the leprosy had come right out the man was clean, and as soon as ever your sin is fully manifest, so that in your conscience you feel yourself to be really a sinner, there is a way of salvation for you. As long as a man has anything to boast of, there is no Christ for him; but the moment he has nothing of his own, Christ is his.—C. H. Spurgeon, A.D. 1860.
Topic: “UNCLEAN, UNCLEAN” (Lev_13:45)
God’s mercy paints malady in hideous tints, that the sufferer may see his plague and hasten to the healer.
Leprosy showed, by a long train of emblem, the complex loathsomeness of sin, that evil might be the more abhorred.
I. THIS MALADY CREPT IN WITH STEALTHY STEPS.
Not easily discerned. Human skill was blind. Wisdom from on high was needed. The anointed priest must search.
Sin lurks within the veins. The world has no detecting eye. The self-pleased fancy boasts of health. Death is begun when all seems life. The plague devours, but ignorance sees not.
Only the Spirit can “convince of sin”: He only can reveal the inborn defilement. He sets the soul before the mirror of God’s Word; opens sightless eyes; and the sinner beholds a hideous mass of polluted self. The light from heaven shows leprosy throughout. [See Job_42:6; and Isa_6:5. Compare also Paul’s testimony. Rom_7:24.]
Sinners, bring heart, and thought, and ways, and life to the revealing Word. Consult not the world’s counsel. Call in the Faithful Witness. Shrink not. Self-knowledge is a step towards Christ. The malady perceived leads to the malady relieved.
II. THE SUFFERER HEARS THE PRIEST’S CODEMNING VOICE.
He is pronounced “Unclean.”
He goes forth; tastes no more the joys of social scenes; shunning and shunned he hides himself in solitude. His whole mien proclaims the misery of his dejected soul. Clothes rent, head bare, mouth covered; and when the hollow voice must speak it sounds the plaintive knell, “Unclean, unclean!”
1. The wretchedness of sin: The “clothes are rent”—symbol of bitterest grief (2Sa_3:31; Job_1:20). There is no woe like that of sin.
2. Lowly shame also: “Head uncovered.” [See Job_19:9.] In the leper thus despoiled we see how sin inflicts an ignominious brand. [Compare Ezr_9:6.]
3. Utterance stifled: “upper lip covered.” The sorrowful and shameful sinner finds speech muffled and choked. When God withdrew, “Then were the seers ashamed,” etc. (Mic_3:7). Sin should be mute. While faithful lips abound in prayer, and send forth songs of praise, and tell of redeeming grace; a sinner’s “throat is an open sepulchre.”
4. Pollution is bemoaned. If a passing step draws near, a piteous warning must be raised—“Unclean, unclean!” (Zec_3:3; Isa_64:6).
5. Outcast from social life. No home may welcome him. In loneliness he pines. No station gains exemption. Miriam (Num_12:14); King Uzziah (2Ki_15:5).
What has sin done? Driven angels from heaven’s light. Excluded multitudes of men from communion with God, holy fellowship, the consecrated board: makes sinners exiles from the heaven bound host, lone “off-scourings” amid the miseries of desert life.
6. Shut without the gates. God and His people within, he “without.” The saved within heaven’s gates—barred; the lost “without” for ever. Thus the leper stands an emblem of sin’s dreadful plague.
Why this picture of horror? That you may sink in despair? Far otherwise.
III. THE GREAT HIGH PRIEST IS NEAR.
1. He comes to the leper. With healing grace, He draws nigh the foulest, the hopeless.
2. His remedy is ready and sure. “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean!” was a leper’s cry. Hear His reply, “I will, be thou clean.”
3. None need be an outcast from His fold. He opens grace and glory to the penitent and trustful soul. [Comp. “Christ is all.”]
Topic: LEPROSY, A PARABLE OF HUMAN DEPRAVITY
A. As it affects the Moral Constitution of Man (Lev_13:1-45).
Leprosy has always been regarded as a mysterious as well as a malignant disease. Unlike other diseases, it was to be detected and treated by the priests. Probably the disease was acquired by the Hebrews while badly fed and hardly worked in Egypt. Their skin would become liable to cutaneous diseases on account of exposure to the dust of brickfields and heat of the burning sun. In the whole range of Scripture is no other malady so fully described. Invested with such prominence and importance, the Hebrews would be (a) put on their guard against ceremonial defilement: (b) filled with the spirit of religious fear: (c) stimulated to desire spiritual purity. The patient, as he repaired to the priest, convicted of pollution, would be humbled, and have thoughts suggested to his mind of unworthiness and sin.
I. LEPROSY WAS MYSTERIOUS IN ITS ORIGIN. Neither the patient nor the priest could tell exactly how or when the disease originated; they had to attend to the symptoms, and concern themselves about the reality and removal. The priest could not look into the springs of life and analyse the seeds of the evil. So, moral evil, that affects our race, is mysterious in its origin; we can detect and trace its symptoms, prove its presence; it corrupts the springs of our moral nature, vitiates all the faculties of the soul. We know by history, observation, especially by experience, that we are children of a sin-smitten race, the taint is in our blood, and only requires favourable circumstances to assert its malignity and power.
II. LEPROSY WAS INSIDIOUS IN ITS PROGRESS. For a while the person affected might be unconscious of its presence; and even the priest might find difficulty in passing judgment after careful examination. It was liable to break out at any time, and assume various aspects. So, with depravity having its seat within, at any time, and under any circumstances, it may reveal its presence and power—develop the most alarming symptoms. Little spots, so-called sins of inadvertency, slight infirmities, may secretly develop into morally corrupt habits, and disfigure the whole life.
III. LEPROSY WAS DETESTABLE IN ITS SYMPTOMS. Every phase of it was associated with uncleanness. The patient not only became loathsome to himself, but offensive to society. Mental and moral anguish would accompany physical pain. The disease would disfigure and deform the frame, rendering life almost intolerable. So, sin produces moral disfigurement, induces all kinds of sorrow. Holiness is beautiful, but wickedness is hideous. Our moral sense puts its stigma upon vice. Moral impurity God loathes, and will ultimately destroy. Society has its lazar houses, where depravity may not only be checked, but where its hideous symptoms may be hidden from beholders. Such sins as those spoken of in Rom_1:21-32 justify the statement of Isa_1:5-6, concerning the offensive features of moral corruption.
IV. LEPROSY WAS INVETERATE IN ITS TENACITY. When once it asserted itself, the sufferer would have to be prompt and persevering in his efforts to get it eradicated. The priest had to make very close scrutiny, to re-examine, and put the leper under repeated probation. Any contact with contagion would suffice to revive the old evil in all its virulence. There was the pre-disposition in the blood, the secret of the trouble was there. So, with moral depravity, it has been transmitted in our blood, the springs of life are vitiated. Sin is indigenous, and defies complete eradiction in this life. Only one sinless Being has lived on our earth, He was immaculately conceived; we, are “born in sin, and shapen in iniquity.” Leprosy defied all human means to remove it; through the instrumentality of the divinely appointed priest alone it succumbed. Education, reform, etc., cannot cure the depravity of the heart, nothing short of “the fountain opened in the house of David for sin and for uncleanness.” Through the mercy of God we can be “abundantly pardoned” here, and become “without spot” hereafter.—F. W. B.
Topic: B. AS IT AFFECTS THE EARTHLY CIRCUMSTANCES OF MAN (Lev_13:45-59)
One of the first penalties the leper suffered was excommunication. No sooner did the priest detect disease, than he commanded withdrawal on the part of the sufferer from healthy society, in order that the infection might not spread.
I. HE WOULD BE SHUT OUT FROM THE DOMESTIC CIRCLE. So sin unsocializes, unfits men for the joys and purity of hearth and home; frequently the morally impure have to be excluded from the company of the virtuous.
II. HE WOULD BE SHUT OUT FROM THE SECULAR CIRCLE. Not permitted to return to his tent, he would be unfit to take his place in society, and fulfil his duties in the world. So wrong-doing and moral turpitude will render men unfit for society, and necessitate their incarceration for reformation and restraint.
III. HE WOULD BE SHUT OUT FROM THE SACRED CIRCLE. Although allowed to repair to the priest, he would not be allowed to mingle and take part in the services of the house of God, the priest shut him up in seclusion. So evil shuts men out from communion with God and His people. Those composing the Church are persons who become separate, and who touch not the unclean thing. The saddest aspect of sin is that it separates the soul from God; and, but for the intervention of our great High Priest, would shut us out from His presence for ever.
How circumspect, therefore, we ought to be! How anxious that the leprosy of our souls may be cleansed!—F. W. B.
Topic: SINFUL SURROUNDINGS (Lev_13:47-57)
Notice was to be taken of leprous garments and houses; and, no matter what their texture or value, if found to be incurably diseased, were to be unscrupulously destroyed. By these things we are taught—
I. THAT GREAT CARE SHOULD BE EXERCISED IN THE SELECTION OF OUR SURROUNDINGS.
We are not absolutely creatures of circumstances, but are marvellously affected by them. We are not responsible for our parentage, nor the early environments which give bias and tone to after life. These are circumstances unforeseen and uncontrollable, to which we are compelled resignedly to submit. But we have to make many of the influences that enwrap us like garments, as we go through life.
(a) The clothes we wear.
(b) The books we read.
(c) The company we keep.
(d) The places we frequent.
(e) The scenes we visit.
All these may have a pernicious and demoralising tendency; they may be leprous, and introduce sin through the gateways of the town of man’s soul. How suitable, then, the advice in Psalms 1 and in Proverbs of Solomon.
II. THAT PROMPT AND DECISIVE ACTION SHOULD BE TAKEN WHEN OUR SURROUNDINGS AWAKEN SUSPICION.
(a) Avail ourselves of judicious advice. The leper took anything he suspected to priest for scrutiny. Let us test our surroundings by the teaching of our Great High Priest; for there can be no high morality without His religion.
(b) Suspend the suspected thing till scrutiny has been made.
Suspected garments were shut up seven days; and repeated if needed. Let us be shy of suspicious books, places, etc. Have them fairly investigated.
(c) If the suspected thing be righteously condemned, let unconditional destruction of it immediately ensue.
The leprous garment was to be consumed with fire. So let us break off at once from bad company or vicious books. The converts at Ephesus burnt their wicked books; that ensured—
(1) That they should do the owners no more harm;
(2) That they should not corrupt others, and—
(3) Showed the reality of conversion.
Things that will not wash, that will not improve by washing, are not to be relied on. Sin is not an external deformity, a trifling irregularity, infirmity, or failing; but in the soul, degrading all its powers, which, if not cleansed, will ultimately get its desert, in everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.—F. W. B.
Topic: THE WONDROUS WORKING OF GOD’S GRACE (Lev_13:12-13; Lev_13:45-46)
The God of Israel could bear with infirmity, blemish, failure, but the moment it became a case of defilement—in head, beard, forehead, or any part—it could not be tolerated in the holy assembly (Lev_13:45-46). Here was the leper’s condition, the leper’s occupation, the leper’s place. What more humiliating than this! Excluded from the only spot in all the world in which Jehovah’s presence was known or enjoyed. In that poor, solitary leper behold—
I. A VIVID TYPE OF ONE IN WHOM SIN IS WORKING.
It is not a helpless, convicted sinner who is here pourtrayed, whose guilt and misery have thoroughly come out—a fit subject, therefore, for God’s love and the Saviour’s blood—but one in whom sin is actually working, one in whom there is the positive energy of evil.
1. So long as sin is working there can be no fellowship with God or with His people. “He shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.” How long? “All the days wherein the plague shall be in him.” This is a great practical truth: the energy of evil is the death blow to communion. It matters not what the amount of the evil be, if it were but a foolish thought, so long as it continues to work it must cause suspension of fellowship.
2. A suggestive paradox in God’s dealing with sinners. When the plague “break out abroad in the skin, and the leprosy cover all the skin of him,” etc., “he is clean” (Lev_13:12-13). The moment a sinner is in his true place before God, the matter is settled. Directly his real character is fully out, no difficulty remains. When the soul is before Him with the cry, “Just as I am!” the free grace of God flows down to him. “When I kept silence,” etc. (Psa_32:3-4); but when “I acknowledged my sin,” etc. (Lev_13:5), “thou forgavest.” The moment a sinner takes his true place as one thoroughly lost, guilty, and undone, as one in whom there is not a single spot on which the eye of Infinite Holiness can rest with complacency, so bad that he cannot possibly be worse, that moment there is a perfect settlement of the entire matter.
II. THE GRACE OF GOD DEALS WITH ACKNOWLEDGED SINNERS.
1. The more evidently a man is a sinner the more clearly is established his title to the grace of God, and to the work of Christ, “for Christ also hath suffered for sins, the just for the unjust,” etc. (1Pe_3:8). The gospel applies itself to all who are on the ground of being lost. It is there, and there alone, that grace can meet the guilty. “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”
2. To have a hopeless view of one’s self is the beginning of salvation. So long as a sinner thinks there is a single spot which is not covered with the direful disease, he has not come to the end of himself. It is when his true condition is fully disclosed to view, and he sees himself “wretched, and poor, and miserable,” that there opens to him the meaning of salvation BY GRACE.—Evolved from “Notes on Leviticus” by C. H. M.
OUTLINES ON VERSES OF CHAPTER 13
Lev_13:2—Theme: FIRST SYMPTOMS OF DEPRAVITY TO BE SUSPECTED.
As soon as a person had suspicion that leprosy was in the blood, before he was certain, or society had branded him, he was to repair to the appointed priest, and submit to a careful examination. If the priest pronounced the presence of disease, the sufferer was to acquiesce uncomplainingly to the decison. We have suggested—
I. BY WHAT SIGNS INDWELLING DEPRAVITY MAY BE DETECTED.
(a) Uprising of evil desire. “When a man shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising.” Inordinate cravings, sensual promptings, etc.
(b) Uprising of inflamed passions. “A scab or bright spot.” Evil, like leaven, soon spreads, and demonstrates its existence; though secret at first, it reveals its vitality and virulence in a palpable manner. Sin has its roots in lust, evil desire; and, when hidden lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. In first transgression, the lustful looking preceded the tasting and fatal eating of the forbidden fruit. Let us check the looking and inward longing, and seek to arrest the uprisings of inward depravity, thus nip sin in the bud.
Indwelling depravity cannot always be detected by (a) personal feelings; or (b) personal inconvenience. Many diseases, at their beginning, are insidious and flattering: do not occasion pain, or seem to impair the strength.
II. BY WHAT TESTS THE EXISTENCE OF INDWELLING DEPRAVITY MAY BE PROVED.
(a) By comparing ourselves with divine descriptions of sin. Probably the Hebrews were furnished with directions to guide them in self-examination, to indicate when they had need to have recourse to the priest. God, in His great mercy, has given a description of sin in the Holy Scriptures: and, by comparing ourselves with the mirror of the Word, we may detect the uprisings of depravity, and see what ravages sin commits in our moral nature.
(b) By repairing to persons competent to guide us in our investigation
The leper was to be brought to the priest; who, under divine guidance and authority, would give needed counsel. So now—although there are no priests after the Aaronic patterns—persons anxious about their souls and the removal of sin do well to confer with the ambassadors of Christ, who have obtained healing of the plague of their own hearts, and seek help from heaven to direct anxious inquirers who ask, “What must I do to be saved?”—F. W. B.
Lev_13:5.—Theme: SCRUPULOUS CARE IN DEALING WITH DEPRAVITY.
The priest exercised great patience in examining every case brought before him; he did not cloak or cover, or seek only to slightly heal; the course adopted was searching and thorough; Sin is not to be treated as a slight moral indisposition, but as a serious radical disease.
I. DEPRAVITY, LIKE LEPROSY, MAY SOMETIMES APPEAR “AT A STAY.” This might be the outcome of—
(a) Heredity. Life healthy transmitted by parentage—ability to resist inroads of infection, development of disease. So, though piety does not run in the blood, yet propensities and dispositions are inherited, and check or quicken depravity.
(b) Organisation. The fires of lust will kindle quicker in some natures than in others. Some persons have animality so preponderating that Satan seems able easily to get the advantage over them.
(c) Environment. Pure surroundings help to repress tendencies to go wrong, to develop dispositions to virtue. The restraints of a godly home, refining influences of a good education may stay the tide of depravity that otherwise would break forth with great volume and power.
II. THOUGH APPARENTLY “AT A STAY,” DEPRAVITY, LIKE LEPROSY, MAY BE UNABATED IN ITS VIRULENCE.
Though the priest did not at first detect signs of disease, yet it may have been lurking dormant in the system, and waiting only for a favourable occasion to awaken into activity. This might occur from
(a) Inward irritation, or
(b) Outward influences.
We do not know what depths of depravity are within us, till some unexpected temptation stirs them, till the enemy comes in upon us as a flood.
III. THE ARREST OF SYMPTOMS OF DEPRAVITY MAY ISSUE IN THE REMOVAL OF THEIR CAUSE.
(a) When sinful habits are stayed, their fires may burn out.
(b) When sinful habits are stayed a new life is to be exhibited.
The healed leper was to “wash his clothes and be clean.” He was to appear among society as a new creature, both in conduct and character. The life of recovered lepers would be
(1) beautiful,
(2) holy,
(3) useful,
(4) happy So of every saved and sanctified soul.—F. W. B.
Lev_13:9.—Theme: SIN NOT TO BE CONNIVED AT.
It was the duty of the leper to go to the priest; of society, to see that he went: “he shall be brought unto the priest.”
I. A MAN WITH LEPROSY NOT TO BE LEFT TO HIS MORBID FEELINGS.
He not at liberty to neglect means of recovery. No excuse, no willingness to commit his case to fate or chance to exonerate him from obligation to own his malady. Liberty in society is only lawful as it is compatible with the general good. The leper must go to priest, for—
(a) His own sake.
(b) Sake of others.
So sinners ought to repair to great High Priest for similar reasons.
II. A MAN WITH LEPROSY TO BE DIRECTED TO MEANS OF CURE.
Friends would take and introduce him to priest, especially those who had obtained healing themselves. We have a right to interfere with the liberty of our fellows when it is for their real and unmistakable good. Let us take sinners to Christ, the Great Physician. He is able and willing to heal, as He healed the lepers in the days of His flesh. He removes leprosy of sin.
The leper was not to puzzle his brains about such questions as—
(a) Why was leprosy permitted?
(b) How is it generated?
(c) How is it cured?
Enough for him to own it: avail himself of means of recovery. Useless, absurd, dangerous to hide or disown it. So with leprosy of sin, it is a good sign when it is acknowledged, sorrowed over, taken to Him who alone can remove depravity, and make our souls as clean as spotless wool, as white as virgin snow.—F. W. B.
Lev_13:2; Lev_13:10; Lev_13:18; Lev_13:24; Lev_13:29; Lev_13:44.—Theme: DEGREES OF DEPRAVITY.
Obviously, in leprosy there were varieties in kind, as well as symptoms. So in depravity it assumes various forms, manifests itself in different ways, though all may be grouped under the denomination, sin. We have suggested—
I. INHERENT DEPRAVITY. “In the skin of the flesh a rising” (Lev_13:2).
II. QUICKENED DEPRAVITY. “Quick raw flesh in the rising” (Lev_13:10).
III. AGGRAVATED DEPRAVITY. “In sight, lower than the skin” (Lev_13:20).
IV. VIRULENT DEPRAVITY. “The quick flesh that burneth” (v 24).
V. HIDEOUS DEPRAVITY. “Plague upon the head, or the beard” (Lev_13:29).
VI. TOTAL DEPRAVITY. “The priest shall pronounce him utterly unclean; his plague is in his head” (Lev_13:44).
Thus depravity culminates in disfigurement of “the human face divine,” suggesting the fact that sin has marred the image of God in man, and deranged the whole of his intellectual and moral powers.
What an evidence of spiritual blindness, that men do not see the hideous nature of sin. No wonder that God—who sees every secret sin—should hate it, and provide for its removal. Those who voluntarily close their eyes to their sinful state, and die impenitent will be moral suicides.—F. W. B.
Lev_13:45-47—Theme: RESULTS OF UNREMOVED DEPRAVITY.
When the leper was pronounced “utterly unclean” by the priest, the case was regarded as desperate and hopeless. So, when sinners become exceedingly vile, and defy every effort made for their amendment, the following things ensue:
I. CHARACTER DESTROYED. The leper’s clothes were rent; so, sin ruins the character of its victims.
II. INTELLECT DETHRONED. The leper’s head was bare; so, the mind of the abandoned sinner becomes neglected, deformed, and unprotected.
III. INFLUENCE PERNICIOUS. The leper’s upper lip covered, to indicate that the breath had become exceedingly corrupt. So, sin changes the tongue from being a wholesome tree, to a pestilential stream of polluting influences.
IV. LIFE CORRUPTED. “He is unclean.” All the springs of life become impure, the whole man is corrupt. So, sin defiles the body, soul, and spirit; pollutes thought, word, and deed.
V. CONDITION SOLITARY. “He shall dwell alone.” Sin cuts men off from society with each other, from holy angels, from God. Religion unites men with the divine Father; and with each other, in the bonds of holy brotherhood.
VI. SELF-CONDEMNED. The poor leper cried “Unclean, unclean!” Wherever he went he proclaimed his complaint. So sinners—whether they know it or not—proclaim, wherever they go (by their character), the depravity that debases them; and, if at last excluded from the place of the holy they will own the justice of the sentence that excludes them.—F. W. B.
ILLUSTRATIVE ADDENDA TO CHAPTER 13
DEVELOPMENTS
“The Present is the living sum-total of the whole Past.”—CARLYLE, Characteristics.
“Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before, consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves.”—GEORGE ELIOT, Adam Bede.
“Large streams from little fountains flow
Tall oaks from little acorns grow.”
—DAVID EVERETT.
“From little sparks may burst a mighty flame.”—DANTE.
“Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill.”—Macbeth, III. 2.
TRANSMITTED EFFECTS:
“And out of darkness came the hands
That reach through nature, moulding men.”
—TENNYSON, In Memoriam.
“The seed we sow another reaps;
The wealth we find another keeps;
The robes we weave another wears;
The arms we forge another bears.”
—SHELLEY.
“The evil that men do lives after them.”
—Julius Cæsar, III. 2.
“No act of man nothing how much less the man himself! is extinguished when it disappears; through considerable time it still works, though done and vanished.”—CARLYLE.
“No action, whether foul or fair,
Is ever done, but it leaves somewhere
A record, written by fingers ghostly,
As a blessing or curse, and mostly
In the greater weakness or greater strength
Of the acts which follow it.”
—LONGFELLOW, Christus.
UNCLEAN
“The seeds of all my sins are in my heart, and perhaps the more dangerous that I do not see them.”—M’CHEYNE.
“Great sins make great sufferers.”—ANNA K. GREEN.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain Uncleanness connected with Leprosy
Uncleanness connected with Leprosy
It is tolerably certain that the leprosy of the OT. is not the leprosy of the Middle Ages, which is still to be found in the East. The latter is a terrible and loathsome disease, called elephantiasis, in consequence of which the skin thickens, the features are distorted, and the very limbs mortify and drop off from the body. The leprosy of the Bible is a skin disease, known as psoriasis, in which the skin and hair grow white, and which is accompanied with scab and flaky scales which peel off. It is doubtful whether it was infectious or not. Some varieties may have been so; but it is to be observed that when the disease entirely covered the body the person was pronounced clean and could mix in society. Leprosy is regarded in the Bible as a type of sin in its loathsomeness and disfiguring and corrupting effects, and its treatment was in many points symbolical.
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3. Plague] i.e. plagued spot.
4. Shut up him] i.e. place him in quarantine: separate the affected person from the society of others and the service of the tabernacle.
9-17. The case of the reappearance of leprosy after it has been cured.
11. Shall not shut him up] there is no need for quarantine as the case is undoubtedly one of leprosy.
13. When the eruption is complete, the disease is supposed to have reached its crisis, and to be discharging itself externally in dry scales.
18-23. The case of leprosy developing from a healed boil.
24-28. The case of leprosy arising from the inflammation following a burn.
29-37. Leprosy in the hair of the head or beard. In this case the hair turns yellow instead of white (Lev_13:30).
38. Another form of leprosy in the shape of white spots. This is harmless, and the affected person is not unclean.
40-44. Leprosy in the bald head.
45. These are the signs of mourning for the dead (cp. Lev_10:6; Lev_21:10; Eze_24:17; Mic_3:7), leprosy being regarded as a living death and the severest token of the divine displeasure: cp. Num_12:12.
47-59. The leprosy of garments. What is described here is not the leprosy that attacks the human being, but a mildew or fungus causing discoloration and corrosion and bearing a superficial resemblance to leprosy: cp. the leprosy of houses, Lev_14:33-53. The regulations regarding this so-called 'leprosy' were no doubt valuable for sanitary reasons; but they would also serve to 'teach the Hebrew to hate even the appearance of evil.' Cp. what St. Jude says (Lev_13:23) of the Christian 'hating even the garment spotted by the flesh.'
48. Warp, or woof] This translation is doubtful. The words probably mean as in RM, 'woven or knitted stuff,' referring to material not yet made into garments.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain 3. Leprosy: Type of Indwelling Sin
3. Leprosy: Type of Indwelling Sin
CHAPTER 13
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1. Leprosy in a person (Lev 13:1-46)
2. The infected garment. (Lev 13:47-57)
3. The cleansing of the garment (Lev 13:58-59)
The entire chapter treats of leprosy. It has been argued from the side of critics that the disease described here is not the one we know as leprosy, but only a similar disease of the skin. The arguments advanced to support this objection are silenced by Mat 8:1-4. The man who came to our Lord had leprosy. The Lord told him “show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.” From this we learn that Leviticus 13 and 14 speak of the real disease, so loathsome and, from human side, incurable. The twelfth and thirteenth chapters of Leviticus are closely linked together. Inherited sin is the theme of the preceding chapter. Its cure is also indicated in circumcision and the offering. Leprosy is the type of indwelling sin and its awful corruption. This horrible disease was chosen by the Lord to typify sin on account of its vileness. Like sin it is progressive and eventually affects the whole being; it is hereditary and incurable. As the disease progresses the victim becomes more and more insensible to his dreadful condition and is even content with it.
“In view of all these correspondences, one need not wonder that in the symbolism of the law leprosy holds the place which it does. For what other disease can be named which combines in itself, as a physical malady, so many of the most characteristic marks of the malady of the soul? In its intrinsic loathsomeness, its insignificant beginnings, its slow but inevitable progress, in the extent of its effects, in the insensibility which accompanies it, in its hereditary character, in its incurability, and, finally, in the fact that according to the law it involved the banishment of the leper from the camp of Israel--in all these respects, it stands alone as a perfect type of sin; it is sin, as it were, made visible in the flesh.” (S.H. Kellogg, Leviticus.)
The Lord had much to say about the examination of persons suspected of having leprosy, and how the disease was to be detected. First the case of leprosy is stated when it rises spontaneously, showing itself in the skin and the hair. Then follows the case where leprosy rises out of a boil and out of a burn (verses 18-28), and finally leprosy on the head or beard and its diagnosis (verses 27-44).
But these general applications of leprosy as a type of sin do not fully explain the lessons of this chapter. We must remember that Israel is viewed as Jehovah’s redeemed people. As such they must keep out of their midst that which defiles. The same principle we find in the New Testament in connection with the church, the assembly of God. Leprosy, indwelling sin, showing itself in any member of the people of God, works havoc. It dishonors God and defiles others. Discipline must be exercised. “Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person” (1Co 5:13). The priest was the person to examine closely the suspected person and pronounce the disease as leprosy, according to the signs given by the Word of God. On the one hand the priest had to watch that no real leper be kept in the congregation of Israel, and on the other hand, he had to be equally careful that none was put out of the congregation who was not a leper. “Holiness could not permit any one to remain in who ought to be out; and on the other hand, grace would not have any one out who ought to be in.” In the New Testament this solemn duty falls upon those who are spiritual (Gal 6:1). Note how God commanded that the suspected one should not be treated in a hasty manner. After the priest had looked upon him, the diseased one was to be shut up for seven days. On the seventh day the priest was again to look on him. Then he was again shut up for seven more days. And after all the seeing and looking upon, the priest was to consider. It showed the necessity of great care. How easy it is to condemn a brother as living in sin, showing leprosy in his conduct; a hasty action in excluding a real child of God from Christian fellowship is as sinful as permitting a wicked person in that fellowship. We cannot enter into the different signs of leprosy. Much which has been written on it by some good men is strained.
When an Israelite was found to have the true leprosy, he had to be without the camp. “And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean. All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean, he shall dwell alone, without the camp shall his habitation be” (verses 45-46). Thus the poor leper was excluded from the congregation of Israel and from the tabernacle of Jehovah. The rent clothes, the bare head, the covering upon the lip, all showed his sad and deplorable condition. So the unsaved sinner is shut out from Jehovah’s presence on account of his defilement and has no place among the people of God. Without the camp! Read the solemn words in Rev 21:27; Rev 22:11; Rev 22:15. The sinner unforgiven and not cleansed will be forever shut out of the presence of a holy God. And one, who is a child of God and belongs to the family and people of God, and permits indwelling sin to work out, is unfit for both fellowship with God and fellowship with His people. But notice it says, “all the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled.” Here is the ray of hope. Only as long as it was in him was he excluded. Recovery from the evil thing which defiles and disturbs our fellowship is blessedly revealed in the New Testament. It has to be brought into the light, must be confessed and put away (1 John 1). And above all, we have an Advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the Righteous. Leprosy in the garment is also reckoned with, and its cleansing by washing is commanded. A garment is that which belongs to a person and is used by him. It is typical of contamination by sin in our earthly occupation. The cleansing by the water is the type of the Word of God, which uncovers the leprosy in our ways and can cleanse us.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain Ordinances Concerning Leprosy.
Ordinances Concerning Leprosy.
v. 1. And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron, saying,
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v. 2. When a man, a person of either sex, shall have in the skin of his flesh a rising, a raised spot on the epidermis, or cuticle, of his skin, a scab, or bright spot, one of a whitish tinge, and it be in the skin of his flesh like the plague of leprosy, the characteristic spot or sore which indicated the presence of the dread disease, then he shall be brought unto Aaron, the priest, or unto one of his sons, the priests;
v. 3. and the priest shall look on the plague, on the spot or sore, in the skin of the flesh; and when the hair in the plague, on the suspicious spot, is turned white, this sign was all the more striking since the hair of the Jews was normally black, and the plague in sight be deeper than the skin of his flesh, when the spot appeared to have sunken into the skin, it is a plague of leprosy; and the priest shall look on him and pronounce him unclean. The name leprosy is derived from a word meaning "to strike, to strike to the ground," the leper being a person who has been stricken or smitten by God. The sickness is contagious only, but was and is commonly treated as being infectious as well. Three forms of the disease were distinguished in olden times: the white leprosy, which was very prevalent among the Hebrews, the tubercular leprosy, or the Egyptian boil, and the black leprosy.
v. 4. If the bright spot be white in the skin of his flesh, and in sight be not deeper than the skin, and the hair thereof be not turned white, then the priest shall shut up him that hath the plague seven days, keep him from intercourse with other people in order to see whether there would be decisive indications pointing to true leprosy.
v. 5. And the priest shall look on him the seventh day; and, behold, if the plague in his sight be at a stay, and the plague spread not in the skin, if the spot has not grown larger nor affected the surrounding parts, then the priest shall shut him up seven days more.
v. 6. And the priest shall look on him again the seventh day; and, behold, if the plague be somewhat dark, if the skin on the spot has regained its normal color, and the plague spread not in the skin, the priest shall pronounce him clean; it is but a scab, a harmless eruption of the skin; and he shall wash his clothes and be clean, for the mere suspicion has brought a taint upon that person, which would be removed by observing the precepts of cleanliness.
v. 7. But if the scab spread much abroad in the skin, after he hath been seen of the priest for his cleansing, he shall be seen of the priest again; this may refer either to the second examination or to a new process made necessary by a subsequent spread of the eruption;
v. 8. and if the priest see that, behold, the scab spreadeth in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean; it is a leprosy.
v. 9. When the plague of leprosy is in a man, when the preliminary stages have been ignored and the disease has reached the ulceration stage without an examination by a priest, then he shall be brought unto the priest;
v. 10. and the priest shall see him; and, behold, if the rising be white in the skin, and it have turned the hair white, and there be quick raw flesh in the rising, the sores having opened with the power of the disease,
v. 11. it is an old leprosy, an incurable form at this stage, in the skin of his flesh, and the priest shall pronounce him unclean and shall not shut him up, the case being so clear; for he is unclean.
v. 12. And if a leprosy break out abroad in the skin, and the leprosy cover all the skin of him that hath the plague from his head even to his foot, wheresoever the priest looketh, and as deeply as his eyes can penetrate,
v. 13. then the priest shall consider; and, behold, if the leprosy have covered all his flesh, he s hall pronounce him clean that hath the plague, the eruption; it is all turned white; he is clean. It seems that the suspected person, in this instance, either had only a harmless skin disease, or the eruption of all the poisonous matter in the body at one time was the crisis and cleansed the blood and tissues from all impurities.
v. 14. But when raw flesh appeareth in him, he shall be unclean.
v. 15. And the priest shall see the raw flesh, and pronounce him to be unclean; for the raw flesh is unclean, the open sore indicated that the germs of the sickness were still present in the person; it is a leprosy.
v. 16. Or if the raw flesh turn again, and be changed unto white, he shall come unto the priest;
v. 17. and the priest shall see him; and, behold, if the plague be turned into white, the ulceration being due to some other cause and having healed with a white covering, or scab, then the priest shall pronounce him clean that hath the plague, the spot or sore: he is clean.
v. 18. The flesh also, in which, even in the skin thereof, was a boil, ulcer, or abscess,and is healed,
v. 19. and in the place of the boil there be a white rising, or a bright spot, white, and somewhat reddish, a whitish-red blotch,and it be showed to the priest;
v. 20. and if, when the priest seeth it, behold, it be in sight lower than the skin, and the hair thereof be turned white, the priest shall pronounce him unclean; it is a plague of leprosy broken out of the boil. These indications, if clear, settled the matter.
v. 21. But if the priest look on it, and, behold, there be no white hairs therein, and if it be not lower than the skin, but be somewhat dark, then the priest shall shut him up seven days;
v. 22. and if it spread much abroad in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean; it is a plague.
v. 23. But if the bright spot stay in his place and spread not, it is a burning boil, the scar of a burn or a wound; and the priest shall pronounce him clean.
v. 24. Or if there be any flesh, in the skin whereof there is a hot burning, a scar left from a burn, and the quick flesh that burneth have a white, bright spot, somewhat reddish, or white, becoming a swollen, shining spot,
v. 25. then the priest shall look upon it; and, behold, if the hair in the bright spot be turned white, and it be in sight deeper than the skin, it is a leprosy broken out of the burning; wherefore the priest shall pronounce him unclean; it is the plague of leprosy. Such spots favored the development of leprosy, the infection could easily take hold in them.
v. 26. But if the priest look on it, and, behold, there be no white hair in the bright spot, and it be no lower than the other skin, but be somewhat dark, then the priest shall shut him up seven days;
v. 27. and the priest shall look upon him the seventh day; and if it be spread much abroad in the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean; it is the plague of leprosy.
v. 28. And if the bright spot stay in his place, and spread not in the skin, but it be somewhat dark, it is a rising of the burning, a slight elevation due to the scar, and the priest shall pronounce him clean; for it is an inflammation of the burning.
v. 29. If a man or woman have a plague, a spot or sore, upon the head or the beard,
v. 30. then the priest shall see the plague; and, behold, if it be in sight deeper than the skin, and there be in it a yellow thin hair, the natural hair being replaced with thin hair of a golden sheen, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean; it is a dry scall, a malicious scurf, even a leprosy upon the head or beard.
v. 31. And if the priest look on the plague of the scall, and, behold, it be not in sight deeper than the skin, and that there is no black hair in it, this being an indication that it was a harmless skin eruption, then the priest shall shut up him that hath the plague of the scall seven days;
v. 32. and in the seventh day the priest shall look on the plague; and, behold, if the scall spread not, and there be in it no yellow hair, and the scall be not in sight deeper than the skin,
v. 33. he shall be shaven, but the scall shall he not shave, this being reserved for further observation; and the priest shall shut up him that hath the scall seven days more;
v. 34. and in the seventh day the priest shall look on the scall; and, behold, if the scall be not spread in the skin, nor be in sight deeper than the skin, the sore being neither deep-seated nor virulent, then the priest shall pronounce him clean; and he shall wash his clothes and be clean.
v. 35. But if the scall spread much in the skin after his cleansing, if after the priest’s examination the sore causes trouble,
v. 36. then the priest shall look on him; and, behold, if the scall be spread in the skin, the priest shall not seek for yellow hair, there being enough symptoms for a definite diagnosis; he is unclean.
v. 37. But if the scall be in his sight, so far as he can judge upon a careful examination, at a stay, and that there is black hair grown up therein, the scall is healed, he is clean; and the priest shall pronounce him clean.
v. 38. If a man also or a woman have in the skin of their flesh bright spots, even white bright spots,
v. 39. then the priest shall look; and, behold, if the bright spots in the skin of their flesh be darkish white, without the luster peculiar to an inner swelling and inflammation, it is a freckled spot that groweth in the skin; he is clean. "It is an eruption on the skin, appearing in somewhat elevated spots or rings of unequal sizes and a pale-white color, which do not change the hair; it causes no inconvenience, and lasts from two months to two years. " (Keil. )
v. 40. And the man whose hair is fallen off his head, he is bald; yet is he clean. This is spoken of cases in which the hair begins to fall out at the crown.
v. 41. And he that hath his hair fallen off from the part of his head toward his face, in the front, beginning above the temples, he is forehead-bald; yet is he clean.
v. 42. And if there be in the bald head or bald forehead a white, reddish sore, it is a leprosy sprung up in his bald head or his bald forehead. Baldness did not render unclean, but leprosy might develop on the bare skin of the head as well as on the body.
v. 43. Then the priest shall look upon it; and, behold, if the rising of the sore be white reddish in his bald head or in his bald forehead, as the leprosy appeareth in the skin of the flesh,
v. 44. he is a leprous man, he is unclean; the priest shall pronounce him utterly unclean; his plague is in his head, the ulcer of leprosy is developing on his head.
v. 45. And the leper in whom the plague is, every person that has been pronounced a leper by the priest, his clothes shall be rent, as a mark of great mourning and affliction, and his head bare, uncovered and unkempt, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip to hide his usually hideous aspect, Eze 24:17-22, and shall cry, Unclean, unclean! as a warning to passers-by.
v. 46. All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled, the Law thus, with all its strictness, taking into consideration a possible recovery of the leper; he is unclean; he shall dwell alone, in order to avoid contact with healthy people; without the camp shall his habitation be. Cf Num 5:2-4; Num 12:14-15; 2Ki 15:5; Luk 17:12. In Palestine the lepers lived outside the city walls, but they were permitted to attend the synagogs in a place set apart for them, the Law demanding, however, that they come after the opening of services and leave in such a way as not to come in contact with healthy persons.
v. 47. The garment also that the plague of leprosy is in, probably such as were contaminated by contact with a leprous person, whether it be a woolen garment or a linen garment, these two being the common materials used for woven clothes;
v. 48. whether it be in the warp or woof, no matter which part of the cloth would first show the infection; of linen or of woolen; whether in a skin or in anything made of skin, in cloaks, mantles, or receptacles for liquids;
v. 49. and if the plague be greenish or reddish in the garment, whether the mold indicating the presence of the disease have the one color or the other, or in the skin, either in the warp or in the woof, even in unfinished garments and cloth, or in anything of skin, in any vessel made of leather,—it is a plague of leprosy and shall be showed unto the priest;
v. 50. and the priest shall look upon the plague, and shut up it that hath the plague seven days.
v. 51. And he shall look on the plague on the seventh day. If the plague, the infected spot,be spread in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in a skin, or in any work that is made of skin, the plague is a fretting leprosy, a corroding infection; it is unclean.
v. 52. He shall therefore burn that garment, whether warp or woof, in woolen or in linen, or anything of skin, wherein the plague is; for it is a fretting leprosy; it shall be burned in the fire, that being the most effective way of removing all danger of infection.
v. 53. And if the priest shall look, and, behold, the plague be not spread in the garment, either in the warp, or in the woof, or in anything of skin,
v. 54. then the priest shall command that they, the owners, wash the thing wherein the plague is, and he shall shut it up seven days more;
v. 55. and the priest shall look on the plague after that it is washed; and, behold, if the plague have not changed his color, and the plague be not spread, it is unclean; thou shalt burn it in the fire; it is fret inward, whether it be bare within or without. The terms in the Hebrew are here used in the same way as those concerning baldness in human beings. Whether the right or the wrong side of the cloth still showed the mark or spot distinctly, the garment was to be condemned.
v. 56. And if the priest look, and, behold, the plague be somewhat dark after the washing of it, the spot less distinct than before the cloth was washed, then he shall rend it out of the garment or out of the skin or out of the warp or out of the woof. It was a matter of wise precaution to remove the suspected spot.
v. 57. And if it appear still in the garment, if the same kind of mold reappeared, either in the warp or in the woof or in anything of skin, it is a spreading plague; thou shalt burn that wherein the plague is with fire.
v. 58. And the garment, either warp or woof, or whatsoever thing of skin it be, which thou shalt wash, if the plague be departed from them, then it shall be washed the second time and shall be clean.
v. 59. This is the law of the plague of leprosy in a garment of woolen or linen, either in the warp or woof or anything of skins, to pronounce it clean or to pronounce it unclean. These were wise sanitary precautions which were here embodied in the Ceremonial Law. The Lord, in His theocratic government, did not ignore the needs of the body.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 then he must be brought
then he must be brought
This can be stated in active form. AT: "then someone must bring him" or "then he must go" (See: Active or Passive)
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to one of his sons
"to one of Aaron's sons"
translationWords
Yahweh
Moses
Aaron
high priest
son
priest
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 13:1–14:57 Concerning the regulations pertaining to infections, the principle…
13:1–14:57 Concerning the regulations pertaining to infections, the principle of normal and abnormal comes into play (see “Clean, Unclean, and Holy” Theme Note). Whether in a person, clothing, or a building, infections are not normal: They indicate disease and death, the antitheses of wholeness, and were therefore declared unclean.
13:1-46 a serious skin disease (Hebrew tsara‘at): The Hebrew word is much broader than the severely disfiguring Hansen’s disease (see study note on 13:2). This larger range included symptoms such as an open sore (13:10), a boil (13:18), a burn (13:24), a sore on the head or chin (13:29), shiny white patches (13:38), or abnormal baldness (13:40). A general test was whether or not the abnormality was spreading (13:5-8). If so, a quarantine was ordered for as long as the disorder persisted (13:46). Not just people, but clothing (13:47-59) and even buildings (14:33-53) could contract such infections.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.